Have we finally discovered the gene that makes people use their left hands?

After their rehabilitation, left-handers remain less mysterious. Their existence is certainly not a matter of cultural acquisition, but rather a matter of science, and the dominance of left- or right-handedness has been observed since the fetal stage. Studying the brains of left-handers arouses the interest of researchers. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands demonstrated a few years ago that “the left hemisphere is dominant.” […] In more than 95% of right-handed people, but only in about 70% of left-handed people. Their latest research is directed, like others in recent years, toward genetics. But be careful, there is no gene that explains the fact that you are left-handed, this is likely a polygenic trait, meaning that many genes are involved. Which remains to be seen.

Working with large samples of data from the UK Biobank, which included 38,043 left-handed people and 313,271 right-handed people, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics was able to establish “statistically significant associations” between a certain number of people who They use the right hand. Locus genomics (a locus is the fixed position of a genetic marker on a chromosome) and predominant left-handedness.

About the TUBB4B gene

the study Published in Nature on April 2, 2024 This suggests mutations in the TUBB4B gene are more common in left-handed people. The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics team estimates that this gene is 2.7 times more likely to contain rare coding variants in left-handed people. TUBB4B explains to us Website Whydocteur.fr, “It is known to bind to microtubule proteins that form the cellular skeleton, also called the cytoskeleton.” Microtubules can thus be linked to brain asymmetry phenomena.

“Further analysis revealed links between left-handers and coding variants of this gene also implicated in autism and schizophrenia, such as DSCAM and FOXP1. “However, we actually note that people with autism are two to three and a half times more likely to be left-handed, This can be explained by this genetic connection.