Recent research confirms that parents are responsible for genetic inheritance that determines height. Now the number of gene regions that influence height account for 424, with 697 common genetic variants that play a role in stature. This number has double the gene regions previous found and is the largest number to date linked with other trait or disease.
The study, published online Oct. 5 in the journal Nature Genetics, was conducted by co-senior investigator Dr. Joel Hirschhorn, of Boston Children’s Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and leader of the international Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium, and co-first study author Tonu Esko, of Boston Children’s Hospital, the Broad Institute and the University of Tartu in Estonia.
The effort to find more genes linked to height was massive: hundreds of investigators analyzed genetic data from more than 250,000 people worldwide to pinpoint these new regions.
“Height is almost completely determined by genetics, but our earlier studies were only able to explain about 10 percent of this genetic influence,” said Dr. Hirschhorn in a hospital news release.
“Now, by doubling the number of people in our study, we have a much more complete picture of how common genetic variants affect height — how many of them there are and how much they contribute,” he explained.
“We can now explain about 20 percent of the heritability of height, up from about 12 percent where we were before,” said Tonu Esko
According to co-senior investigator Peter Visscher, of the University of Queensland in Australia, “The study also narrows down the genomic regions that contain a substantial proportion of remaining variation — to be discovered with even larger sample sizes.”
Many of the 697 height-related genetic variants are located near genes already known to be associated with growth; but there were also some surprises.
“Many of the genes we identified are likely to be important regulators of skeletal growth, but were not known to be involved until now,” Hirschhorn said. “Some may also be responsible for unexplained syndromes of abnormal skeletal growth in children. As you increase the sample size, you get more biology.”
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