Heredity versus environment
Combat draw
Medical Daily – Nature vs. Nurture Debate: 50-Year Twin Study Proves It Takes Two To Determine Human TraitsFor many decades, there have been debates about what has a greater impact on a person: upbringing and the environment or genetics.
According to the results of a new extensive study, no one has won in this struggle: the scale of influence is comparable.
Scientists from the Queensland Brain Institute (Queensland Brain Institute) and from the Free University of Amsterdam (VU University of Amsterdam) conducted a meta-analysis, processing data from almost all studies involving twins over the past 50 years. The resulting sample included 14.5 million pairs of twins.
The twin method is the most important in the study of the role of genes and the environment. It is based on a comparison of the traits and health status of identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (heterozygous) twins. Identical identical twins developing from the same fertilized egg have identical genotypes. Accordingly, the differences between them are attributed to the influence of the environment.
It turned out that, on average, each trait or disorder is caused by genes and environment approximately equally (49% of the variability is due to genes, about 51% is due to environment and/or measurement errors). For some states, of course, this relation does not hold. For example, in the case of bipolar disorder, the contribution of genetics is 70%, and environmental factors – 30%.
The results may leave the ardent fans of one of the sides of the "heredity versus environment" dispute unsatisfied. But, as one of the authors says, the data will help to choose the optimal strategy for finding genes that affect diseases.
Article by Polderman et al. Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies published in the journal Nature Genetics – VM.
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22.06.2015