The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed the genomes of 895 Finnish criminals who were placed in categories from non-violent to extremely violent based on the nature of their crimes.
Variants of two genes, MAOA and CDH13, were found to be associated with violent crime. Violent criminals, the 78 of whom had committed a total of 1,154 violent crimes, were linked most strongly to the genes, while the non-violent criminals were not associated with them.
It’s the first large-scale study to look specifically at genetics and criminal violence. MAOA, dubbed “the warrior gene” a decade ago by Science, the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has already been linked to aggression. The second gene, CDH13, has been previously linked to impulse control.
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