{"id":34272,"date":"2021-09-12T12:32:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T17:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=34272"},"modified":"2021-09-12T12:32:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T17:32:27","slug":"word-of-the-day-727","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/09\/12\/word-of-the-day-727\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Polygenic scores<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In\u00a0<a title=\"Genetics\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Genetics\">genetics<\/a>, a\u00a0<b>polygenic score<\/b>\u00a0(PGS), also called a\u00a0<b>polygenic risk score (PRS)<\/b>,\u00a0<b>genetic risk score<\/b>, or\u00a0<b>genome-wide score<\/b>, is a number that summarises the estimated effect of many genetic variants on an individual&#8217;s\u00a0<a title=\"Phenotype\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phenotype\">phenotype<\/a>, typically calculated as a weighted sum of trait-associated\u00a0<a title=\"Allele\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Allele\">alleles<\/a>. It reflects an individual&#8217;s estimated genetic predisposition for a given trait and can be used as a predictor for that trait.\u00a0In other words, it gives an estimate of how likely an individual is to have a given trait only based on genetics, without taking environmental factors into account. Polygenic scores are widely used in\u00a0<a title=\"Animal breeding\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Animal_breeding\">animal breeding<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a title=\"Plant breeding\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Plant_breeding\">plant breeding<\/a>\u00a0(usually termed\u00a0<i>genomic prediction<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0<i>genomic selection<\/i>) due to their efficacy in improving livestock breeding and crops.\u00a0In humans, polygenic scores are typically generated from\u00a0<a title=\"Genome-wide association study\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Genome-wide_association_study\">genome-wide association study<\/a>\u00a0(GWAS) data.<em> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polygenic_score\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Wikipedia<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Noted in &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/emerging-cracks-in-the-woke-elite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Emerging Cracks In The Woke Elite<\/em><\/a>,&#8221; Andrew Sullivan, <strong><em>The Weekly Dish<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Similarly, it was quite a shock to read in The New Yorker a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2021\/09\/13\/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters\" rel=\"\">fair and empathetic profile<\/a>\u00a0of an academic geneticist, Kathryn Paige Harden, who acknowledges a role for genetics in social outcomes. It helps that Harden is, like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/the-logic-of-bell-curve-leftism\" rel=\"\">Freddie DeBoer<\/a>, on the left; and the piece is strewn with insinuations that other writers on genetics, like Charles Murray, deny that the environment plays a part in outcomes as well (when it is clear to anyone who can read that this is grotesquely untrue). But if the readers of The New Yorker need to be fed distortions about some on the right in order for them to consider the unavoidable emergence of \u201cpolygenic scores\u201d for humans, with their vast political and ethical implications, then that\u2019s a step forward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polygenic scores: In\u00a0genetics, a\u00a0polygenic score\u00a0(PGS), also called a\u00a0polygenic risk score (PRS),\u00a0genetic risk score, or\u00a0genome-wide score, is a number that summarises the estimated effect of many genetic variants on an individual&#8217;s\u00a0phenotype, typically calculated as a weighted sum of trait-associated\u00a0alleles. It reflects an individual&#8217;s estimated genetic predisposition for a given trait and \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/09\/12\/word-of-the-day-727\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34273,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34272\/revisions\/34273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}