Stay Curious

SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AND UNLOCK ONE MORE ARTICLE FOR FREE.

Sign Up

VIEW OUR Privacy Policy


Discover Magazine Logo

WANT MORE? KEEP READING FOR AS LOW AS $1.99!

Subscribe

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

FIND MY SUBSCRIPTION
Advertisement

Predicting someone's face: look at their parents

Explore the complexities of facial morphology genetic prediction and its limits compared to traits like height. Click to learn more!

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

A few years ago there was a paper out which illustrated that standard Galtonian method of regression of offspring upon parents still predicted height far better than the most modern genomic techniques. The issue is that height is a quantitative trait whose variation is controlled by variants at hundreds, and likely thousands, of loci. Generating a useful prediction for one individual from a "bottom-up" genetic model is daunting because of the overwhelming number of variants. This is in contrast to pigmentation traits, which been found to be well characterized by a few large effect quantitative trait loci. That is, one gene can account for a substantial minority of the variation within the population of the trait. In regards to eye pigmentation in Europeans the majority of the blue vs. non-blue eye color difference can be accounted for by one locus, HERC2-OCA2. Not so for height, intelligence, and now it seems ...

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe
Advertisement

0 Free Articles