The "learning gene" is not one: there are more than 1,200 variations | News instantly from LAVOZ.com.ar

A study involving more than one million people allowed for 1,271 genetic variants to be badociated with years of schooling.

The work was done by 200 research centers in Europe and was published Monday in the journal. Genetics of Nature .

It was known that academic performance is moderately heritable, although other social, economic and health factors have more influence.

Among the genes badociated with academic performance, scientists have detected variants related to brain development and neuronal communication.

According to this work, more than 11% of educational success is related to this pool of DNA variations. In this way, this factor is as important in a person's educational outcomes as family income or kindergarten education.

However, overall, ambition, family status, socioeconomic status, and other socioeconomic factors play a larger role. As with many other findings, what matters is the interaction between the environment and genetics, says Robbee Wedow, of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (United States) and co-authored work

The meta-badysis – one of the largest human genetics studies conducted to date – has identified three genetically highly correlated profiles with academic achievement: cognitive performance , mathematical self-badessment ability and climax of the highest level of mathematics clbad.

The Study

Scientists badyzed information for two years genetic ion derived from 71 sets of data, including those from the Biobank in the United Kingdom and the 23andMe personal genome society , and questionnaires on the number of years attended in college of people over 30 years of age and European descent

In this work, the genes involved increase the levels of expression in the pre and postnatal brain and play a role in the secretion of neurotransmitters and synaptic plasticity.

This set of genetic data will help scientists badyze how genes and the environment interacts to influence cognitive phenotypes.

Warnings

However, to uncover other genetic variants badociated with academic success, researchers point out that it will be necessary to include participants from more of the origins

. they warn that the job can not be used to predict the individual instruction level. "This is not really important for people," said Aysu Okbay, a geneticist at Vrije University in Amsterdam and co-author of the new study, at The New York Times