Massive family tree predicts life span is 16% heritable
/Thirteen million degrees of Kevin Bacon: World’s largest family tree shines light on life span, who marries whom
Researchers have published what may be the validated largest family tree ever: a genealogy database stretching back 5 centuries that links 13 million people related by blood or marriage. The tree has already led to such insights as the link between genes and longevity and why our ancestors married whom they did. And researchers say that’s just a start.
“This study is an impressive and clever use of crowdsourcing data to address a number of interesting scientific questions,” says geneticist Peter Visscher of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who was not involved with the work. The tree’s bigger promise, he and others say, could come if it were linked to health information to explore the role of genetics in diseases.
