Study Says DNA’s Power to Predict Illness Is Limited

If every aspect of a person’s DNA is known, would it be possible to predict the diseases in that person’s future? And could that knowledge be used to forestall the otherwise inevitable?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/health/research/dnas-power-to-predict-is-limited-study-finds.html?_r=1

Smoking: Early age at onset and risk genotypes means deadly combination...

There are many publications regarding the variants in Nicotinic receptor and association with smoking behaviors. Recently our group in Washington University published paper which states that these associations might be age dependent. There are several reports which shows that during adolescence period parental monitoring, lack of money and peer groups might be strong predictors of addiction related behaviors. Therefore it is very important to model the age at onset to predict the outcome of these complex behaviors. We found that genetic effects are stronger when individual cross certain threshold of addiction or cross certain age when he/she is more independent to make decisions.

We are further studying these individuals with longitudinal data in COGA dataset for variety of addiction related behaviors.

Paper can be access at:  http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033513

Variants Located Upstream of CHRNB4 on Chromosome 15q25.1 Are Associated with Age at Onset of Daily Smoking and Habitual Smoking