Investigating the genetic basis of altruism: the role of the XXXX @entity27510 polymorphism.

@entity398 @entity1 @entity5549 @entity935 @entity27510 @entity2596
Findings from twin studies yield heritability estimates of 0.50 for prosocial behaviours like empathy, cooperativeness and altruism. First molecular genetic studies underline the influence of polymorphisms located on genes coding for the receptors of the neuropeptides, @entity398 and vasopressin. However, the proportion of variance explained by these gene loci is rather low indicating that additional genetic variants must be involved. Pharmacological studies show that the dopaminergic system interacts with @entity398 and vasopressin. The present experimental study tests a dopaminergic candidate polymorphism for altruistic behaviour, the functional @entity5549 @entity27510 SNP. N   =   101 healthy Caucasian subjects participated in the study. Altruism was assessed by the amount of money donated to a poor @entity1 in a developing country, after having earned money by participating in two straining computer experiments. Construct validity of the experimental data was given: the highest correlation between the amount of donations and personality was observed for cooperativeness (r   =   0.32, P    <=   0.001). Carriers of at least one @entity2596 allele donated about twice as much money as compared with those @entity1 without a @entity2596 allele (P   =   0.01). Cooperativeness and the @entity2596 allele of @entity5549 additively explained 14.6% of the variance in donation behaviour. Results indicate that the @entity2596 allele representing strong catabolism of @entity935 is related to altruism.
