We grow up believing that a person's height is generally affected by the genes of the parent: for example, if the father is around 6 feet tall, then there's a good chance that the offspring will also grow up that way.
However, what we are not aware is how these genes really influence the height differences and why it's still possible to have shorter children even when a parent or some siblings are tall. A new study may be able to shed light about it.
A team of researchers from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Boston's Children Hospital discovered several genetic variants that are responsible for the differences in height among humans. Overall, there are more than 600 of these variants found within over 400 gene regions. To come up with the results, they had to scan no less than 250,000 people's genomes.
Science already says that about 80% of height information is found in our genes. In 2007, the first height gene was discovered.
What are the implications of the study? First, the results can be further harnessed to include more people, this time from various ethnic backgrounds or races. This is to expand the number of gene variants that regulate or determine height.
When it comes to medicine, the discovery of these genes may be used in the future to have a better understanding of diseases that affect height such as osteoporosis and even cancer, as well as certain abnormal physical growths. They can answer questions as to how the skeletal system of a specific person develops and why a family of tall people can still have generations of smaller children-it's possible that most of their gene variants "point" to a smaller stature.
The researchers are even confident that their study and the future ones will have merit in forensics. Using the DNA sample that may be left in a crime scene, the team can now analyze the height gene variants and have a more accurate idea of the suspect's height.