Dorret Boomsma
| Dorret I. Boomsma | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
18 November 1957 Huizen, The Netherlands |
| Residence | Amsterdam |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Fields |
Behavioural genetics Biological psychology |
| Institutions | Vrije Universiteit |
| Alma mater | Vrije Universiteit, University of Colorado at Boulder |
| Notable awards | Spinoza Prize (2001), Membership in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) (2001) |
Dorret I. Boomsma (born 18 November 1957, Huizen, The Netherlands) is a Dutch biological psychologist specializing in genetics and twin studies.
After receiving her Ph.D., Boomsma received an appointment as an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit in the Department of Psychonomics. In 1994 she became associate and in 1998 full professor and head of the Department of Biological Psychology.
Boomsma has built a database of over 75,000 twins and family members in The Netherlands, which has been used for dozens of twin studies. The twins and their families have undergone periodic testing over a period of decades, providing a mass of longitudinal data for statistical analysis. A large number of participants have also provided DNA, blood, and urine samples for testing. Her research has primarily focused on better understanding the influence of heredity on various physical and mental diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, pediatric bipolar disorder, and depression. This work has been reported in over 450 published papers and one book and has led to many awards for Boomsma.
Twin studies provide a way to understand how genotype affects an observable characteristic (called a phenotype). In short, identical (monozygotic) twins carry the same alleles for 100% of their genes whereas fraternal (dizygotic) twins will carry different alleles at 50% of the genes for which their parents had different genotypes. So if some characteristic (say, depression) that is observed in one identical twin is always observed in the other one, but this does not hold for fraternal twins, then one can conclude that heredity plays an important role in causing the condition.
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