Petaflop Computer Clusters Crunch Genomes of Giant Minds

Petaflop Computer Clusters Crunch Genomes of Giant Minds:
Collection, Sequencing, Analysis of the World’s Largest Extreme-IQ
Genomic Cohort. Laurent Tellier et al.

It is not part of the ISIR tradition to give a prize for the best title, since delegates are, of course, not fooled by such things, and are entirely taken up with judging a paper’s content, but, this is one hell of a title.

Unfortunately the authors are coy about the results, and won’t say what has come out of the analysis.

Over 2,200 DNA samples have been gathered from subjects with very high IQ.
Many (n=1,688) were assessed and identified early on, in nation-wide talent
programmes. Others (n=548) have been enrolled and evaluated through protocols
specially implemented by the Cognitive Genomics Lab project. The procedures applied
for cohort phenotype assessment, the characteristics of the samples gathered so far, the technology involved in their treatment and sequencing, and the bioinformatics methods deployed in the genomic analysis, are reviewed. We describe the model of the genetics of intelligence, variance, and mutation used in the study design, the reasoning underlying this model, the implications on what types of variants we look for, and the prospects for the collection of further, equivalent cohorts in East Asia and Scandinavia.
We state in advance that samples are currently undergoing sequencing - and
resequencing - in BGI’s recently acquired Complete Genomics technology, and that
analysis results therefore will not be revealed prematurely in the lecture or ensuing
Q&A.

You could try emailing the authors so as to be informed the moment the results are made public.

laurent@cog-genomics.org; chris@cog-genomics.org; james@cog-genomics.org;
steve@cog-genomics.org