Next-Gen and the Study of Behaviour

This chapter gives an overview of the current sequencing technologies and how they can be applied to studying the genetics of behaviour. It discusses where the potential limitations of the currently available next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and bioinformatics tools lie and presents examples where NGS has been successfully used for linking genes and behaviour. The chapter also provides a glimpse into where we might be going next and how recently developed tools may be incorporated into the study of behavioural phenotypes. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) aims to screen many individuals varying for a specific phenotype at a genome-wide scale without any pre-existing bias towards any regions or genes in order to link the phenotypic variation with underlying genetic variation. Technologies such as microarrays, restriction site-associated DNA sequencing, exome sequencing and whole-genome sequencing are all used for GWAS and linkage mapping.