Scientists can predict how tall you will be by studying DNA

Scientists can now look at your DNA and predict whether you will be taller than average. Height now joins eye and hair colour and age as things that can be predicted by scrutinising your genes.

The researchers from the Netherlands and Sweden cannot deliver 100 per cent accuracy, they write today in the journal Human Genetics. They are much better than chance however and are midway between chance and fully accurate, they say.

The ability to predict physical characteristics in this way is often held up as a way to produce a "designer baby" with pre-sampling of genetic material allowing some level of choice over height or eye colour.

The ability to predict adult body height from genetic data is helpful in several areas however including paediatric endocrinology and forensic investigations.

In the study led by Prof Manfred Kayser from the Department of Forensic Molecular Biology at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, 180 DNA variants previously implicated in normal height variation were tested in a Dutch European sample consisting of 770 extremely tall cases, and over 9,000 normal height control subjects.

“Although the achieved DNA-based prediction accuracy for tall stature is still somewhat lower than we previously established for eye colour, hair colour and age, I expect that upcoming new knowledge on height genetics will further increase the accuracy in predicting tall stature, and eventually the full range of body height, from DNA,” said Prof Kayser.

“In forensics, DNA-based prediction of appearance traits such as height, eye colour, hair colour and age, is useful to find unknown perpetrators whose conventional DNA profiles are not known to the investigating authorities and who thus escape current DNA identification,” he said.