Dawn Drain's open-source repo enables embryo selection via polygenic scores
New repo uses public GWAS data to predict IQ, height, and disease risk for IVF embryos.
Deep Dive
Dawn Drain released an open-source repo for polygenic prediction and embryo selection. It pulls data from the PGS catalog, filters weights using Claude, and combines intelligence and education datasets via MTAG. Validation achieved r=0.3 for height and SAT scores. The tool converts polygenic scores into QALYs for embryo selection, accounting for within-family attenuation (which cuts variance explained by a factor of 0.5 for IQ and 0.4 for education).
Key Points
- Combines PGS catalog weights with MTAG to create an improved intelligence predictor from 250k IQ and 750k education datapoints.
- Validation on OpenSNP data gave r=0.3 for height and SAT scores, despite incomplete SNP overlap.
- Converts polygenic scores to QALYs for embryo selection, adjusting for within-family attenuation (0.5 for IQ, 0.4 for education).
Why It Matters
Enables prospective parents to use open polygenic data for embryo selection, raising profound ethical and practical questions.