Correlation analysis among single nucleotide polymorphisms in thirteen language genes and culture/education parameters from twenty-six countries

Abstract

Language is a vital feature of any human culture, but whether language gene polymorphisms have meaningful correlations with some cultural characteristics during the long-run evolution of human languages largely remains obscure (uninvestigated). This study would be an endeavor example to find evidences for the answer of above question. In this study, the collected basic data include 13 language genes and their randomly selected 111 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), SNP profiles, 29 culture/education parameters, and estimated cultural context values for 26 representative countries. In order to undertake principal component analysis (PCA) for correlation search, SNP genotypes, cultural context and all other culture/education parameters have to be quantitatively represented into numerical values. Based on the above conditions, this study obtained its preliminary results, the main points of which contain: (1) The 111 SNPs contain several clusters of correlational groups with positive and negative correlations with each other; (2) Low cultural context level significantly influences the correlational patterns among 111 SNPs in the principal component analysis diagram; and (3) Among 29 culture/education parameters, several basic characteristics of a language (the numbers of alphabet, vowel, consonant and dialect) demonstrate least correlations with 111 SNPs of 13 language genes.