Random Samples

From Science Magazine:

Researchers in the United Kingdom are aiming to set up the world's largest twin registry.

"We've been developing TwinBank for about a year," says behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who is working with genetic epidemiologist Timothy Spector of King's College London.

A pilot study funded by the U.K.'s National Health Service, which has birth records for more than 600,000 twins, estimates that at least 300,000 pairs would agree to participate, Plomin says. That would outnumber all the world's other twin registries combined. Determining whether twins are monozygotic (identical) or dizygotic (fraternal) "would add tremendous value" in studying genetic and environmental contributions to health, he says.

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