Scientific Mission
COGA's aim is to identify the genes involved in alcoholism. There is a large body of twin-studies and adoption-studies that show that alcoholism is inherited. COGA is trying to determine more specifically how it is inherited and what genes are involved. There is no one gene that controls alcoholism, rather it is polygenetically controlled.
That means there are several different genes that influence risk factors involved in alcoholism. Examples of these risk factors include one's level of response to alcohol, a person's neuroelectrochemistry, and other psychiatric disorders, such as Antisocial Personality Disorder or clinical depression.
Read more about this topic: Collaborative Studies On Genetics Of Alcoholism
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or mission:
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)