Start from a word, not an rsID

Topics

Everything else here starts from a variant. This starts from a topic — the kind of thing you would type into a search box — and asks which of our positions turn up in the same papers. A shared paper means somebody wrote about the two together. It is not a claim that the variant explains the topic, and for most of these the honest finding is that common variants explain very little of it.

Written section

Smell and taste

The one axis you can check on yourself: variants that change the perception rather than the odds.

5 variants · 37 papers

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Exercise and muscle

The "sprinter gene" is the most oversold result in consumer genetics.

35 variants · 155 papers

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Alcohol and the flush

One of the few places where a single variant is visible in the mirror.

32 variants · 303 papers

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Brain and memory

What actually changes in a brain over a lifetime, and which of it is written down in advance.

18 variants · 84 papers

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Longevity and ageing

The supplement industry's favourite word, and what the data supports.

17 variants · 38 papers

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Learning and focus

Whether the difficulty of sitting down to study is partly inherited — a question with real, and repeatedly overstated, research behind it.

15 variants · 58 papers

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Sleep and insomnia

Why some people wake at 5am without an alarm and others cannot.

13 variants · 27 papers

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Depression and stress

The field that taught genetics its hardest lesson about single genes.

12 variants · 139 papers

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ADHD and attention

Diagnoses are rising fast; the genetics is real and highly polygenic.

11 variants · 32 papers

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Gut and food intolerance

Bloating, dairy, gluten — the most-searched symptoms with real genetics behind some.

11 variants · 39 papers

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Skin, sun and hair

The visible traits, which is why they are the ones people look up first.

10 variants · 51 papers

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Sport and performance

Talent tests sold to parents, and what the research behind them actually supports.

10 variants · 44 papers

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Running and endurance

Running clubs, first marathons, and a watch telling you your VO2max.

9 variants · 62 papers

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Smoking and vaping

How hard quitting is turns out to be partly a metabolic question.

9 variants · 106 papers

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Risk-taking and impulsivity

Trading, betting, and every "should I?" at 2am. There is real genetics here — and it explains far less than the headlines say.

6 variants · 16 papers

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Caffeine and energy drinks

The most-consumed drug on earth, metabolised at wildly different speeds.

5 variants · 49 papers

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Personality

Whether the shape of a personality is partly inherited — and the twenty years of famous findings that turned out not to replicate.

5 variants · 16 papers

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Weight-loss medicines

GLP-1 drugs made obesity genetics a dinner-table subject.

5 variants · 8 papers

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