Can mutations make people read more?
Can mutations make people read more?
August 01, 2018 Source: China Youth Daily
Window._bd_share_config={ "common":{ "bdSnsKey":{ },"bdText":"","bdMini":"2","bdMiniList":false,"bdPic":"","bdStyle":" 0","bdSize":"16"},"share":{ }};with(document)0[(getElementsByTagName('head')[0]||body).appendChild(createElement('script')) .src='http://bdimg.share.baidu.com/static/api/js/share.js?v=89860593.js?cdnversion='+~(-new Date()/36e5)];63 years ago, Einstein's brain was cut into 240 pieces, soaked in a glass jar filled with formalin. Under a high-precision microscope, one neurologist has studied the genius's brain and repeatedly observed each fold and ditch to try to find out what is unusual. In the end, there are no valuable discoveries.
Where does wisdom come from, and why it is different—from the study of brain volume to neural differences, scientists are looking more and more microscopically. Many of them believe that perhaps human wisdom has long been written into a string of genes that record life codes.
The global research team led by American scholar Daniel Benjamin saw some difference in human intelligence in the genome. They and collaborators collected more than 1.1 million individual sample data comparing their time of formal education with the genetic mutations contained in the DNA. Through extensive calculations, they found 1,271 genetic mutations associated with educational achievement, which together accounted for 11% of differences in educational achievement between individuals.
This impact ratio exceeds the annual household income, which can only explain the difference in educational achievement of 7%.
Most of these genetic mutations are related to brain development and information exchange between neurons. This means that they are likely to be related to the formation of human intelligence. What scientists try their best to find is not one or several key genes that can determine wisdom, but sporadic "smart fragments" scattered in the human genome.
"As the amount of data grows larger, more genetic loci will be discovered." Zheng Zhili, a Chinese scholar at the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Queensland, told the China Youth Daily and China Youth Online reporter that he participated in the study. The calculation of genetic data is firmly believed that there are still quite a few fragments that have not yet been discovered.
Incredible results have been produced
When Benjamin was a Ph.D. in economics, he participated in a seminar on “Neuroeconomicsâ€. It is a new field that explores how the human brain influences individuals to make decisions.
After listening to the report, Benjamin and the mentor were excited. They discuss while walking, what is after neuroeconomics?
"The Human Genome Project was just over, and we thought that genes are more fundamental than the brain, and one day it will be important to social science research," recalls Benjamin, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.
Excitement brings him to the forefront of academic fields. In the newly developed subject space of genetics and economics, Benjamin began to use genetic data to predict human behavior and status, such as educational achievements, reproductive behavior, overweight, and happiness.
Educational achievement is his most concerned direction. As we all know, the length of education is greatly affected by the social environment, but Benjamin believes that if the sample size is large enough, the potential impact of the gene may be discovered. Genes can indirectly influence an individual's development in school by affecting cognitive functions such as memory and understanding.
For five years, Benjamin has continued to expand the sample size. When the sample size was about 100,000, he found three genetic mutations related to educational achievement. When the number of samples expanded to 300,000, he found 74 related mutations. When the sample size increased to 1.1 million, the incredible results were produced, and 1271 related mutations appeared in front of him.
The influence of a single gene mutation is almost negligible, even the most relevant mutation, the impact is only 0.04%, less than one-tenth of the influence of the gene mutation associated with height, "only allow individuals to have more than 3 weeks The school time around."
On the dot plot, these sample data are a cloud of discrete clouds. However, combining these points has a relatively significant predictive power for the group. Benjamin and colleagues created a scoring system based on the results of the study. The more individuals have associated mutations, the higher the score. They calculated the scores of 4775 Americans and divided them into 5 groups according to their scores. After reviewing their educational achievements, Benjamin found that 12% of the teams with the lowest scores completed college, and 57% of the highest-scoring groups finished college.
This result shows that the impact of genes on educational achievement does exist. But they are too weak to be predictive of individuals, and many of the subjects with very low scores still receive higher education.
Benjamin also found a conclusion that in the past people often thought that men and women were genetically different, which led to different ways of thinking and learning, but he did not find this difference in his research.
Some genes related to intelligence can also affect the entire body.
Humans have long been eager to improve their intelligence. Francis Galton is the originator of "eugenics." After reading the cousin Darwin's "The Origin of Species" in the natural selection doctrine, he was inspired to write the first book "Genetic Genius" that tried to study excellence.
"By careful selection, we can easily breed talented dogs or horses that are good at running or doing anything else. Then, through prudent marriage, humans can continue to breed for a few days. The race is divided." Galton straightens his chest.
Galton’s vision has been thrown into the trash of history along with Nazism. Humans with new technology are trying to achieve a higher level of leap - skip the long natural choices and directly edit the passwords of life.
Humans have been able to detect fetal DNA, scan them item by item, and have the technical means of genetic editing of embryos, but the biggest puzzle in front of people is: What do those characters mean?
The encyclopedia of the genome, which records about 6 billion letters, records all the information needed to build humans. Any two people on the planet, the genome is 99.5% identical. The natural difference between people lies in the difference in genetic variation sites.
The traditional research method is to find genes corresponding to traits. For example, differences in eye or hair color point to specific genes. But once it involves differences in cognitive or learning abilities, research almost ran aground on the shoal of evolutionary complexity. The academic circles have been slow to find out which genes control human wisdom.
“If geographers want to figure out the geological formations, or the crustal movements between the continents for millions of years, they don’t want to pick up a few pebbles in the backyard and analyze their chemical composition.†One Victoria University Psychologists believe that scholars have made the wrong direction. "You must consider the scale of the research object. Not all human behavior can find explanations at the neuron and genetic levels."
A geneticist at Stanford University also supports this view. In his view, many human complex traits are not controlled by single genes or multiple genes. They are affected by all genes.
This hypothesis outlines a complex genetic map. They may not be arranged in isolation from each other as people have imagined in the past, but closely related and interacting.
Some genes related to intelligence have been found to affect the entire body. Some genes are associated with bone growth and hypertension, and some genes produce an enzyme that is combined with a growth-promoting factor similar to insulin.
Like Benjamin’s discovery of more than 1,000 genetically related mutations, these latest discoveries seem to make the mystery of wisdom even more confusing.
2 million people's genes
Before Benjamin, many studies tried to confirm the link between genes and education, but almost all failed. The important reason for their being criticized is that the sample size of the study is too small.
“In recent years, there have been 1 million sample studies.†Zheng Zhili told the China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online reporter, “When we study diseases, many small genetic effects cannot be seen, only the sample size is large enough. The site is easy to find."
In 2011, Benjamin and his colleagues formed the Social Science Genetic Association (SSGACC), rewriting the history of geneticists alone. They brought together thousands of research projects and established a global shared pool of genetic data.
Much of the data comes from medical and biological research questionnaires. Volunteers may be involved in medical research on “hypertension,†but they are often “caught†to ask for personal information. Education is a very common one. item. These research data were often wasted after being used in a particular study, and Benjamin re-excavated their value.
The further development of the data pool comes from two large DNA research databases - 442,183 samples collected by the British Biobank will be included in the library. The 23andMe research team contributed genetic data of 365,538 volunteers, a huge database of over one million samples. form.
In Zheng Zhili's laboratory, hundreds of T (1T equals 1024G) of memory brings together research data from multinational organizations, clustered high-performance computers are running at a rapid pace - this is almost the "normal" of genetic data research, in the future More "millions of" sample studies will be released.
Benjamin plans to eventually expand the sample size to 2 million people. In this way, he can find more genetic mutations associated with education and produce more predictive genetic scores. According to a previous scholar's calculation, the correlation between all genetic mutations and education levels may reach 20%.
This association is not so strong. Scanning the genomes of millions of people and doing huge calculations, the Benjamin team’s research is “losing†compared to the cost of consumption: they did not find genes that directly promote intelligence, and did not find the uniqueness of the genius genes. Instead of making a highly predictive scale, it is complicating the problem.
But perhaps this is the greatest value of the research itself. The answer to the puzzle may be hidden in the interaction between the gene and the environment, even though Einstein's brain is nothing special compared to the average person.
Although many science fiction novels have episodes that transform human intelligence, as more and more genetic mutations that may be associated with intelligence are discovered, this concept may be illusory due to the huge amount of engineering. (Reporter Guo Luyao intern Wu Yuqiang)
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