Scientists find gene that gives you intelligence
Baku, April 17 (AZERTAC). Scientists say they have found a gene linked to intelligence, a small piece in the puzzle as to why some people are smarter than others.
A variant of this gene "can tilt the scales in favor of a higher intelligence", study leader Paul Thompson said, stressing though that genetic blessings were not the only factor in brainpower.
Searching for a genetic explanation for brain disease, the scientists stumbled upon a minute variant in a gene called HMGA2 among people who had larger brains and scored higher on standardized IQ tests.
Thompson dubbed it "an intelligence gene" and said it was likely that many more such genes were yet to be discovered.
The variant occurs on HMGA2 where there is just a single change in the permutation of the four "letters" of the genetic code.
The discovery came in a study of brain scans and DNA samples from more than 20,000 people from North America, Europe and Australia, of European ancestry.
People who received two Cs from their parents, a quarter of the population, scored on average 1.3 points higher than the next group - half of the population with only one C in this section of the gene.
The last quarter of people, with no Cs, scored another 1.3 points lower.
It is generally accepted that genes, a good education and environmental factors combine to determine our intelligence.
The research, published in Nature Genetics, was conducted by more than 200 scientists from 100 institutions worldwide, working together on a project called Enigma.
Thompson said other studies have implicated some genes in IQ, but this was the first to link a common gene to brain size.
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