The Wall Street Journal's Science Journal (April 22, 2005) reports how life experiences affecting DNA is becoming better understood in lab animals and humans.
In the lab, Michael Meaney and his colleagues of McGill University in Montreal report that maternal care changes the chemistry of a "neuroticism gene" and the rat grows up to be mellow and curious. This innate genetic trait of neuroticism is reversible by a nurturing environment.
In a 2003 study, confirmed in 2004, a gene called 5-HTT thought to be associated with depression and suicide was not unless people who carry it also experience deeply stressful life events. In another study, men with the low-activity ("violent") form of a gene called MAOA were no more likely to grow up to be antisocial or violent unless they had also been neglected or abused as children.
"These genes were not connected with aggression or depression, respectively, in the absence of exposure to environmental risk," says behavioral geneticist Terrie Moffitt of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and King's College London. "That different environments can produce different (traits) from the same genotype is now emerging in many fields of health research."
"The whole subject of what counts as innate has just exploded," says science historian and physicist Evelyn Fox Keller of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Historically, nature/nurture divided what was fixed from what could be changed. But what our biology really gives us is our plasticity; our ability to respond to our experiences. That's what's innate."
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