Summary for those wishing to follow science but who can't do math: consider many pairs of individuals and ask to what extent similarity in genotype is related to similarity in phenotype (g score, specific ability score, height, weight, etc.). From this analysis one can estimate the extent to which genes influence phenotype (heritability), and to what extent the same genes are influencing two different traits (e.g., height and weight, or reading ability and general cognitive ability g). The bivariate method is described here in more detail.
"These results indicate that genes related to diverse neurocognitive processes have general rather than specific effects."
DNA Evidence for Strong Genome-Wide Pleiotropy of Cognitive and Learning Abilities (DOI 10.1007/s10519-013-9594-x Behavior Genetics)
Abstract: Very different neurocognitive processes appear to be involved in cognitive abilities such as verbal and non-verbal ability as compared to learning abilities taught in schools such as reading and mathematics. However, twin studies that compare similarity for monozygotic and dizygotic twins suggest that the same genes are largely responsible for genetic influence on these diverse aspects of cognitive function. It is now possible to test this evidence for strong pleiotropy using DNA alone from samples of unrelated individuals. Here we used this new method with 1.7 million DNA markers for a sample of 2,500 unrelated children at age 12 to investigate for the first time the extent of pleiotropy between general cognitive ability (aka intelligence) and learning abilities (reading, mathematics and language skills). We also compared these DNA results to results from twin analyses using the same sample and measures. The DNA-based method revealed strong genome-wide pleiotropy: Genetic correlations were greater than 0.70 between general cognitive ability and language, reading, and mathematics, results that were highly similar to twin study estimates of genetic correlations. These results indicate that genes related to diverse neurocognitive processes have general rather than specific effects.
[GCTA] ... The bivariate method extends the univariate model by relating the pairwise genetic similarity matrix to a phenotypic covariance matrix between traits 1 and 2 (Lee et al. 2012). The eight principal components described earlier were used as covariates in our bivariate GCTA analyses; as mentioned in the previous section, all phenotypes were age- and sex-regressed prior to analysis.
Twin modelling. The twin design and model-fitting is discussed elsewhere (Plomin et al. 2013a). We fit a bivariate Cholesky decomposition using OpenMx (Boker et al. 2011), which provided a direct comparison with the bivariate GCTA. The correlated factor solution is the least restricted model allowing variables to correlate with one another via genetic, shared environment, and non-shared environment.
... Table 1 shows GCTA-estimated genetic correlations (and standard errors, SE) between ‘g’ and learning abilities for more than 2,238 12-year-old UK twins (randomly selecting only one member of each twin pair to control for potential confounds, such as birth order) based on 1.7 million SNPs measured from the Affymetrix 6.0 GeneChip or imputed from HapMap 2,3 and WTCCC controls (Trzaskowski et al. 2013). Genetic correlations are significant and substantial for all three comparisons—between ‘g’ and language (0.81), mathematics (0.74), and reading (0.89). The GCTA-estimated genetic correlations between ‘g’ and learning abilities are similar in magnitude to the GCTA-estimated genetic correlation between height and weight (0.76). In addition, Table 1 includes bivariate results for ‘g’ versus height and ‘g’ versus weight as ‘negative controls’; their phenotypic correlations are both 0.07. As expected, these comparisons yielded negligible and nonsignificant genetic correlations (−0.03 and −0.06, respectively).
... A more novel question, and central to the present paper, is why, as we have shown here, bivariate genetic correlations estimated by GCTA are as great as twin study estimates. The likely reason is that attenuation of the estimated additive genetic variance due to imperfect linkage disequilibrium between causal variants and genotyped SNPs applies to both the additive genetic variance of the two traits and to their additive genetic covariance by the same proportion. Thus, the GCTA estimate of the genetic correlation is unbiased because it is derived from the ratio between genetic covariance and the genetic variances of the two traits.
Are generalist genes all in the mind (cognition) or are they in the brain as well? That is, genetic correlations between cognitive and learning abilities might be epiphenomenal in the sense that multiple genetically independent brain mechanisms could affect each ability, creating genetic correlations among abilities. However, the genetic principles of pleiotropy (each gene affects many traits) and polygenicity (many genes affect each trait) lead us to predict that generalist genes have their effects further upstream, creating genetic correlations among brain structures and functions, a prediction that supports a network view of brain structure and function.
