Distribución mundial de la diversidad genética asociada a la estatura humana adulta

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are widely used to investigate the genetic basis of many complex traits. One of the most studied human traits is height, a phenotype of great interest as a proxy for human growth. Human height is influenced by both the genome and the environment, and it is difficult to estimate the contribution of each of these factors to the total variation of adult height. In this work, after analyzing a set of 823 SNPs related to human height by means of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we observed that the global geographical distribution of these variants showed a great heterogeneity, reflecting a remarkable variability within and among continents. In addition, we found a positive correlation between the genetic heritage of Europeans, in particular with that of the populations of Northern and Central Europe, and a higher expected height.