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Abstract
By looking at the genomes of people living in former coal-mining areas, he has found genetic signatures associated with spending fewer years at school compared with people outside those areas, and - at weaker significance levels - variants that correlate with lower socio-economic status. To the geneticists and social scientists doing this work, the results offer a useful and important guide to the relative contributions of nature and nurture to specific behavioural traits - just as genetic analysis can already highlight people who have an increased risk ofcancer or heart disease. Sabatello, the bioethicist, predicts that the first applications will be in specialist education, such as for cases in which the parents of children with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia could use genotypes as evidence to demand a different approach for their child. [...]because GWAS are done mostly using data from people of European ancestry, this could make the results less applicable for different ethnic groups.