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Dopamine D4
Certainty Style Key
Hover over keys for definitions:
True
Likely
Speculative
MOCA Domain:
GeneticsGene DRD4 codes dopamine receptor D4. Dopamine is relatively small molecule with 8 carbon atoms, belonging to catecholamine family. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, emitted from synaptic vesicles. Dopamine receptors are located on postsynaptic membrane, and D4 is one of this receptor. In human populations, there is VNTR (variable number of tandem repeat) within the coding region of this gene, ranging from 2 to 7 repeats. Some studies (Ebstein et al., 1996; Benjamin et al., 1996) suggested that people with 7-repeat tend to have higher novelty seeking activity than common 4-repeat alleles. In chimpanzee, 5-repeat alleles are most frequent (Hattori et al., 2009). It is not clear if repeat difference really affect human behaviour such as novelty seeking.
References:
Ebstein RP, Novick O, Umansky R, Priel B, Osher Y, Blaine D, Bennett ER, Nemanov L, Katz M, Belmaker RH (1996) Dopamine D4 receptor (D4DR) exon III polymorphism associated with the human personality trait of Novelty Seeking. Nature Genetics, 12: 78–80. Benjamin J, Li L, Patterson C, Greenberg BD, Murphy DL, Hamer DH (1996) Population and familial association between the D4 dopamine receptor gene and measures of Novelty Seeking. Nature Genetics, 12: 81–84. Hattori E., Nakajima M., Yamada K., Iwayama Y., Toyota T., Saitou N. and Yoshikawa T. (2009) Variable number of tandem repeat polymorphisms of DRD4: re-evaluation of selection hypothesis and analysis of association with schizophrenia. European Journal of Human Genetics, 17:793-801.