Polygenic score

Hello, everyone.

So for those of you who have seen my two episodes of the students, you will know that I am very interested in polygenic scores.

So basically, this is the idea that due to the wonders of modern technology, we can sequence a person's genome and make predictions about them, about their health, or in the case of that I'm particularly interested in, we can make predictions about their educational attainment, IQ, cognitive ability, whatever you want to call it.

In my students' episode, I focused on how excited I was about the potential future applications of this technology.

I should probably ask if he would be okay with us putting it online because it was amazing.

But basically the gist of it is that the thesis is partially true.

Basically, when you look at the population that founded Rome, it seems like the skeletons we have from the early Republic period of the polygenic scores that we've done, it looked like they had an unusually high polygenic IQ scores.

They looked like they had probably unusually high human capital.

Hello, everyone.

So for those of you who have seen my two episodes of The Students, you will know that I am very interested in polygenic scores.

So basically, this is the idea that due to the wonders of modern technology, we can sequence a person's genome and make predictions about them, about their health, or in the case that I'm particularly interested in, we can make predictions about their educational attainment, IQ, cognitive ability, whatever you want to call it.

In my students' episode, I focused on how excited I was about the potential future applications of this technology.

I should probably ask if he would be okay with us putting it online because it was amazing.

But basically the gist of it is that the thesis is partially true.

Basically, when you look at the population that founded Rome, it seems like the skeletons we have from the early Republic period of the polygenic scores that we've done, it looked like they had an unusually high polygenic IQ scores.

They looked like they had probably unusually high human capital.

The other partner has no relevant family history.

They're planning to have a baby and they are coming to the clinic to ask if they can use polygenic risk scores to select an embryo during IVF that is absolutely guaranteed never to develop schizophrenia.

They are seeking the illusion of total biological control.

Right.

They require a perfect storm, a combination of widespread genetic vulnerability meeting specific environmental exposures.

Spot on.

So let's look at the first key, single nucleotide variants, or SNVs, and how they relate to polygenic risk scores, or PRS.

What exactly are we looking at on the genome?

Precision medicine is what is really going to take us to the next level of treating, hopefully slowing down or stopping Parkinson's disease.

Now, I just wanted to ask you about the polygenic risk scores.

Are they ready to enter clinical practice? And how much of the problem is there that a lot of these scores are actually developed in European populations?

Yeah, so as polygenic scores use genome-wide association study results to calculate a number, which the number doesn't mean much, but then it allows you to classify people into low genetic risk versus high genetic risk, for example, depending on how many variants you have.