Plomin, R;
Haworth, CM;
Meaburn, EL;
Price, TS;
Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2;
Davis, OS;
(2013)
Common DNA markers can account for more than half of the genetic influence on cognitive abilities.
Psychological Science
, 24
(4)
562 - 568.
10.1177/0956797612457952.
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Abstract
For nearly a century, twin and adoption studies have yielded substantial estimates of heritability for cognitive abilities, although it has proved difficult for genomewide-association studies to identify the genetic variants that account for this heritability (i.e., the missing-heritability problem). However, a new approach, genomewide complex-trait analysis (GCTA), forgoes the identification of individual variants to estimate the total heritability captured by common DNA markers on genotyping arrays. In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Common DNA markers can account for more than half of the genetic influence on cognitive abilities |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/0956797612457952 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612457952 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm). PMCID: PMC3652710 |
| Keywords: | Child, Cognition, Genetic Markers, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genotype, Humans, Intelligence, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Twins, Dizygotic, Twins, Monozygotic |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1390251 |
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