Insights – the Understanding Society podcast
Sep 28, 2026 · 15 min · 9 segments
In the first of our new season of podcasts, we’re looking at research using Understanding Society’s biological data which examined how some genes work differently in different people. Our guests are…
Radu ZabetGuest
Leo SchalkwykGuest
Chris CoatesHost
But waves two and three, about three and a half thousand people gave blood samples and were in the process of collecting more.
So, yeah, there is this whole other area of research that's possible with our data.
If I can add a bit on why I think why this is a particularly important cohort, is most of the studies that are published on DNA methylation variation between individuals, are done on cohorts that have specific phenotype, like there are specific diseases or their aging population or other phenotypes.
So we wanted to have this baseline and inter-individual variation without adding any confounding variables.
Because if you look at DNA methylation variation, in an aging population, most of your identified regions in the genome that are showing these differences between individuals will likely be linked with aging phenotype.
Or if you look at a specific cancer, you will find regions that are specifically for that cancer.
But having this baseline will allow other researchers trying to link the epigenome with different phenotypes to understand whether the epigenetic variation they discovered associated with a specific disease is something that they might need to control for because it's something that is quite high already in the British population.
But waves two and three, about three and a half thousand people gave blood samples and were in the process of collecting more.
So, yeah, there is this whole other area of research that's possible with our data.
If I can add a bit on why I think why this is a particularly important cohort, is most of the studies that are published on DNA methylation variation between individuals, are done on cohorts that have specific phenotype, like there are specific diseases or their aging population or other phenotypes.
So we wanted to have this baseline and inter-individual variation without adding any confounding variables.
Because if you look at DNA methylation variation, in an aging population, most of your identified regions in the genome that are showing these differences between individuals will likely be linked with aging phenotype.
Or if you look at a specific cancer, you will find regions that are specifically for that cancer.
But having this baseline will allow other researchers trying to link the epigenome with different phenotypes to understand whether the epigenetic variation they discovered associated with a specific disease is something that they might need to control for because it's something that is quite high already in the British population.
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