Many people can vividly remember being 18 and tentatively opening that envelope containing crucial information about the future. On the surface, it’s strange to think that genes have anything to do with it – but our new study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals that genetic factors influence both university enrolment and achievement. How can inherited DNA […] … learn more→
Tag Archives: genetics
How we discovered the genetics of university success
We’re not prepared for the genetic revolution that’s coming
When humans’ genetic information (known as the genome) was mapped 15 years ago, it promised to change the world. Optimists anticipated an era in which all genetic diseases would be eradicated. Pessimists feared widespread genetic discrimination. Neither of these hopes and fears have been realised. The reason for this is simple: our genome is complex. […] … learn more→
Can genes really predict how well you’ll do academically?
Researchers at King’s College London say they are able to predict educational achievement from DNA alone. Using a new type of analysis called a “genome-wide polygenic score”, or GPS, they analysed DNA samples from 3,497 people in the ongoing Twins Early Development Study. They found that people whose DNA had the highest GPS score performed […] … learn more→
Genetics: what it is that makes you clever – and why it’s shrouded in controversy
For nearly 150 years, the concept of intelligence and its study have offered scientific ways of classifying people in terms of their “ability”. The drive to identify and quantify exceptional mental capacity may have a chequered history, but it is still being pursued by some researchers today. Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwin’s cousin, is […] … learn more→
A tenth of quirky creature’s active genes are foreign – Research
Up to ten per cent of the active genes of an organism that has survived 80 million years without sex are foreign, a new study from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London reveals. The asexual organism, the bdelloid rotifer, has acquired a tenth of its active genes from bacteria and other simple organisms […] … learn more→
Mystery of the domestication of the horse solved
New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild stocks as they spread throughout Europe and Asia. For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been thought that horse domestication originated in […] … learn more→
Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large Ice-Age mammals
The history of six large herbivores — the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox — is the subject of a study by an international group of scientists investigating how climate fluctuations and human activity affected mammal populations at the end of the last ice age. According to Beth Shapiro, the […] … learn more→
