Adolescence is one of the key stages during which individuals are vulnerable to depression. About 30% adolescents in Chinese primary/middle schools have elevated level of depressive symptoms. If not interfered in time, the depressive symptoms may lead to clinical depression, or even worse - - suicide. This study used a classic method of Behavioral Genetics - - twin design, and borrowed some experimental techniques from molecular genetics, in order to explore the mechanisms and characteristics of adolescent depression, and to find how environmental factors interact with genes. Participants were 800 pairs of twins (10-18 years old), recruited from primary and middle schools in Beijing. We assessed the participants' depression level, negative life events they encountered in their life and parenting style of their parents by a series of questionnaires.Buccal cells were collected and genome DNA was extracted. Genotyping was conducted for several polymorphisim loci in a couple of candidate genes.Finally, the behavioral data and the gene data were analyzed jointly to investigate how individuals with different genotypes responded to the risk environmental factors, especially, how their depression levels changed when they encountered risk environmental factors. Up to date, several achievements were gained: First, 1,38
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