Genetics influences the friends you make?
Hi everyone! It’s good to be back again at Genetics and Health. One of my kids had to have an op and I’ve been hand holding ever since - not to mention sleeping on a hospital z bed… mmm! Still, the op was a total success so I’m happy.
Sifting through the mountains of genetics press releases and email updates I get on a daily basis from my work in the field of medical genetics, I note that the age old question of nature or nurture is back in the news. I’ve always been fascinated by this subject … is it our genes that dictate the way we behave or is it the environment we’re brought up in?
I suspect, like a great many, that both play a role. You only have to look at breast cancer research. There are the BRCA genes which if you have these mutations give you an 80% chance of developing breast cancer during your life (ie very high).
Then there are the SNPs, parts of genes which if faulty can increase our risk of developing breast cancer. If our lifestyles are not that healthy - too little exercise, too much fat, not enough fruit and veg etc. etc then we’re at far greater risk of tipping ourselves over into developing breast cancer.
An interesting article by researchers at The Virginia Commonwealth University suggests that the company we keep may be increasingly influenced by our genes. Kenneth S Kendler MD, a professor of psychiatry and human genetics in VCU’s School of Medicine says ’As we grow and move out of our own home environment, our genetically influenced temperament becomes more and more important in influencing the kinds of friends we like to hang out with’.
I can sympathize with these findings to a certain extent but I do feel that once we’ve flown the nest life and make our way out in the big bad world, life gets daunting so we fall back on our ‘comfort zones’ which tends to be the way we were brought up by our parents.
I class that as environment/nurture and not nature!
Source: http://www.vcu.edu
Penny
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POSTED IN: General Genetics and Health, Genetic Future, Genetic Ingenuity, Genetics of Disease
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