DOTTIE MAE, FLICKR
It’s no surprise that a person’s height is written in the genes, but individual genes have been found to predict only a small percentage of size variation in the population. A new has found that very short people had more rare deletions of gene regions than those of more average stature, suggesting that the number of deleted gene regions, not just individual gene mutations, may affect height.
A team of researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston analyzed the DNA from 4,400 children, and found that those at the bottom of the height pool had fewer copies of many genes than those in the middle of the pack, according to a study published in the December issue of American Journal of Human Genetics. When they extended their ...
