Forums » Open clinical » General clinical » Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
|
Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
posted at 15/10/2011 10:44 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
Posts: 134
First: 2/8/2010 Last: 19/5/2012 |
Researchers have discovered that a single gene (STX1A) may accont for the 15% of the variation in intelligence among those with Williams syndrome. WS is a developmental disorder that arise when someone is missing 26 genes from his 7th chromosome The strong correlation between STX1A and intelligence may provide insight into the general population as well. If it does, the gene may give us the means to predict, analyse and enhance IQ, hopefully in the near future |
|
|
Re: Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
posted at 16/10/2011 12:04 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
Posts: 1177
First: 25/1/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
In Response to Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome: Researchers have discovered that a single gene (STX1A) may accont for the 15% of the variation in intelligence among those with Williams syndrome. WS is a developmental disorder that arise when someone is missing 26 genes from his 7th chromosome The strong correlation between STX1A and intelligence may provide insight into the general population as well. If it does, the gene may give us the means to predict, analyse and enhance IQ, hopefully in the near future Posted by alaminium Do you know where the paper was published? - I'd be interested in having a read |
|
|
Re: Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
posted at 17/10/2011 1:49 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
|
*Moderator*
Posts: 597
First: 17/11/2008 Last: 18/5/2012 |
Here's a link - it is open access http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010292 They don't do structured abstracts at PLoS which I ifnd a bit annoying but here is the unstructured abstract. Rather interesting to think of intelligence having a cellular pathway. I thought of it as something much less tangible. Although genetics is the most significant known determinant of human intelligence, specific gene contributions remain largely unknown. To accelerate understanding in this area, we have taken a new approach by studying the relationship between quantitative gene expression and intelligence in a cohort of 65 patients with Williams Syndrome (WS), a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a 1.5 Mb deletion on chromosome 7q11.23. We find that variation in the transcript levels of the brain gene STX1A correlates significantly with intelligence in WS patients measured by principal component analysis (PCA) of standardized WAIS-R subtests, r = 0.40 (Pearson correlation, Bonferroni corrected p-value = 0.007), accounting for 15.6% of the cognitive variation. These results suggest that syntaxin 1A, a neuronal regulator of presynaptic vesicle release, may play a role in WS and be a component of the cellular pathway determining human intelligence. |
|
|
Re: Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
posted at 17/10/2011 9:49 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
|
Posts: 134
First: 2/8/2010 Last: 19/5/2012 |
Well Docs, that's great...So we are looking at the gene therapy to boost the IQ at an early stage of mentally subnormal children. We might find stem cell transplantation (SCT) more promising than direct gene targeting. In one published study the percentage of younger Down syndrome children (up to 3.5 years of age) with mental development index of over 50 points increased from 17% before the first SCT, to 58% after the first SCT, and to 71% after the second SCT, and the IQ in the older children (4 - 9 years of age) moved from the 25 to 49 points range to 50 - 69 points range, and the difference was statistically significant. |
Forums » Open clinical » General clinical » Gene for intelligence revealed by studying williams syndrome
