Variants associated with educational attainment (the number of years of schooling completed by an individual, called EduYears) are identified in a new genome-wide association study (GWAS) of nearly 294,000 individuals of European descent. Okbay et al. identified 74 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) — predominantly in areas associated with brain-specific gene expression — that explain 0.43% of the variation in educational attainment across sampled individuals. Analysis of data from 37 adult tissues assayed by the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project revealed that only the 13 GTEx tissues related to the central nervous system had significantly increased gene expression near EduYears-associated SNPs. Functional annotation on the basis of gene-set clusters suggested that many candidate genes from the GWAS-implicated loci are involved in fetal neural development. The authors caution against misinterpretation of their findings, as educational attainment is a complex phenomenon that is primarily determined by environmental factors.
References
Okbay, A. et al. Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature17671 (2016)
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Koch, L. Genetic associations with a social science outcome. Nat Rev Genet 17, 375 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg.2016.73
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg.2016.73