As I skimmed my emails one morning, one stopped me in my tracks. “Is overeating in your genes? Take an online test.” I was curious—not about whether my genes prompted me to pig out, but about how the company’s test was supposed to determine that.
As it turned out, all the company offered was a questionnaire asking if you ate when you weren’t hungry.
In the 11 years since the sequencing of the human genome was announced, new techniques have radically changed the approach to identifying genes related to particular traits. Now “genome-wide” surveys examine the links between a trait and all of the 20,000 or so human genes.
Related on the SLP
Read the full, original story: A Height Gene? One for Smarts? Don’t Bet On It
