Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Genetically Speaking, You're More Like Your Dad
Although you may have many traits from your mother, genetically speaking, you use more DNA passed from your father. A new study involving mice led researchers to discover this conclusion and that it likely also applies to all mammals.
We all receive one copy of DNA from our mother and one from our father, but that doesn't necessarily mean they both share an equal active role in creating who we are. From the thousands of mouse genes studied, many showed parent-specific effects on the offspring pointing directly to the dads. About 60% of the mouses' paternal genes were shown to be more active than those from the mother. This imbalanced gave the mice offsprings a brain more similar to their father, than their mother.
Researchers now believe that a gene inherited from a mother wouldn't be expressed as much as the one inherited by the father. As a result, the same bad mutation would have different consequences in disease if it were inherited from the mother or from the father. Knowing this imbalance exists in how your parents’ genes affect you, could help scientists treat and predict diseases more accurately.
I think this study is very interesting. There have always been arguments about which parent contributes more to the offspring, but now there is concrete evidence that the fathers in fact carry that weight. This study can lead to much more involving disease research and possibly finding ways to control this inheritance through the fathers.
Labels:
DNA,
father,
gene expression,
human genes
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This is an extremely interesting study. We have been continuously preached upon that each parent give us half of their DNA. I would prefer if my mothers DNA dominated, so I find this article a little scary and interesting. One would assume if there was an imbalance the mother who carries the zygote would express more of her DNA.
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