Probing the Genetics of Intelligence

Researchers in ChinaWIKIMEDIA, JEFF KUBINA will scour the genomes of 1,600 super-smart people in an attempt to find common genetic variants associated with intelligence, reported Nature. But some geneticists argue that the sample size remains too small, and intelligence too complex, for the study to produce any meaningful conclusions.

“If they think they’re likely to get much useful data out of this study, they’re almost certainly wrong,” geneticist Daniel MacArthur of the Massachusetts General Hospital told Nature.

Previous attempts to identify intelligence-related variants in the general population have failed, but behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin of King’s College London has now teamed up with the BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen to sequence DNA samples he collected from a cohort of Americans who were recruited to the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) group in the 1970s. The plan is to compare the genomes of these people, who have an average IQ of over 150 (compared to 100 in the general population)—and those of other highly intelligent individuals recruited by the BGI—with those ...