Growing up, kids want to be exactly like their parents, or want to be nothing like their parents. It's not always the kids say though. They can change their behavior depending on how they want to reflect their parents, but there are some characteristics that are out of their control.
You know you get your looks from your parents through DNA and your genes. Most people also know they inherit certain behaviors from their ancestors, i.e. depression running in the family, cancer running in the family, alcoholism running in the family. Is there a gene that is related to depression? It turns out epigenetics explains these inheritances. Epigenetics does not depend on what you eat and do growing up, but like other genes, epigenes can be past from parents to offspring, meaning what your parents eat, drank, did, the environment they grew up in, affect you as well. Epigenetics can be passed from generation to generation just as the gene for eye color can be.
The key to epigenetics is methylation, the addition or removal of methyl groups along the nucleotide sequence can explain certain behaviors. The methyl placement can be passed on from generation to generation. An article in Discover Magazine, titled "Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes " explains the background of epigenetics and how methyl groups can be added. Some methyl group placements are inherited, others are effected prenatally, and others are effected postnatally. The majority of these changes are brought on by the environment you grew up in, how your parents treated you, how their parents treated them, etc. The article looks at epigenetics and their relationship to psychological/behavioral traits. Using rats as test subjects, rats that grew up under a distant, non-attentive mother had more methylation in genes that are linked to stress control. These pups were more stressed out later in life. Rats that had attentive, loving mothers had less methylation in the brain and had lower stress levels. These studies showed how upbringing is linked to epigenetics. Studies were done looking at rats born from stressed mothers had methylation similar to their mothers and were stressed indicating methyl inheritance. Knowing this, that decisions you make in your younger years will affect your future children, and how you treat your children will affect them greatly, how will you change your life style or habits? Do you think there are ways to counteract any epigenetic changes that have already occurred?
The article also mentioned drugs, trichostatin A, that would remove methyl groups and when give to the stressed pups their stress levels lowered and the amount of methylation was less. A question I asked myself as I read that, and the article ends with, is would you take a drug that could remove methyl groups from your genome? It's in early stage of development and the article was unclear if trichostatin A could target certain areas or if it does a broad sweep. If depression runs in your family would you take a drug that could rid you of it? Or are there other ways, environmentalways, that you can help yourself and help your future children?
I get that all the time " you talk like your dad and behave like him". I think it is more related to psychology because when you lived your childhood with your parents, you watched them solve their problems, watched their reaction to many situations. so you are prone to emulate those kinds of behaviors even if you don't like it. Your brain now have set of standards. It is like a program or software. You're brain is a computer and you basically installed the parents program. I would like to see how adopted children would behave: like their original parents? maybe. Anyways, I like the fact that behavior could be associated with our genes. It just show how complex our genetic code is.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested in adoption studies there are many to be found in psychology literature, I've only taken an introduction to psychology class, but even that book had a lot of information about adopted kids, twin studies, and how upbringing changed certain things, but other traits developed the same.
DeleteI don't think changing my lifestyle habits now will help my future children down the line. I think the way the female handles her pregnancy and how she raises her child will be the biggest factor. My stress levels now are high, but in the future when I am ready to settle and have kids, I expect it to be a mainly stress-free environment that I am comfortable with bringing a child into. Therefore, the child should not pick up on my earlier habits.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't take drugs to correct my methyl groups, partly because I don't even like taking drugs. I can only imagine those side effects. I think there are other ways to go about helping ourselves and our children without always resorting to drugs for a "quick fix".
Do you think the stress you have right now in your life will effect you later on to some degree? I have high stress levels too and I can see how it effects me physically and mentally to some degree and I wonder how it will cause me to react to things later in life. I agree though, ideally I'd like to have a less stress lifestyle before I decide to bring a child into my life.
DeleteThe second child would be the trick.
DeleteMaybe it's just me, but I believe some things should just be left alone. If I was born or predestined to have certain characteristics, why bother it, it's there for a reason right? Altering methyl groups just doesn't sound normal to me.
ReplyDeleteThis would be the main reason why, although I love science and its many advancements, it sometimes can be too much.
I agree completely that science can be too much at points. After reading about epigenetics and how your parents, and grandparents lives can effect you, how your upbringing can affect you at the smallest level is overwhelming. It makes it hard to believe that even after all that we still have our own personality and our own traits, habits, and ultimately what makes us, us.
DeleteIs there a way to target which genes that you want to (un-)methylate? Or replace them with (un-)methylated copies?
ReplyDelete