Armadillo Quadruplets shed insight on human identical twin DNA expression

 

    The nine banded armadillo is wholly unique when it comes to its offspring. Without fail, a female armadillo will give birth to quadruplets, all genetically identical. This is due to the fertilized egg splitting twice, creating four embryos before they are implanted in the uterine wall. Also that nine banded armadillos can have distinctly differing personalities and behaviors after birth is also intriguing for the scientists, but still have the same genes. There could be also slight physiological differences between offspring. Since armadillos have the 32 pairs of chromosomes to play with , it could lead to greater variety of the genome. Also that early in development, the X chromosome of the embryos will start suppressing parts of the genome at random. Silencing some genes while activating other genes that make slight differences in the offspring's DNA. Also they factor in the environmental changes that could affect behavior, the majority of how the personality is determined is still a black box . What ever genes that affect personality go in, the expressed personality and behaviors come out.

A Louisiana research facility studies the nine banded armadillo for Hanson's disease (leprosy) and its transmission to humans, possible inheritance, testing methods to detect leprosy ,sequencing the genome and strains of leprosy and medicines to treat the disease. Scientists could have new model to study gene expression and heritability. 

It could shed insight on how human identical twins could have differing genes from the same sequence and how it affects their health. 

Exercising Effects During Pregnancy

According to an article published in the New York Times, “Does Exercising During Pregnancy Lead to Exercise-Loving Offspring?” scientists speculate whether a growing baby’s body and its DNA can be changed by the environment it experiences in the womb before and after birth. Researchers speculate that after a number of studies identified various snippets of DNA, a person carrying them predisposes that person to be active, while other gene variations may result in a person being inactive. 

  Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine andRiced University in Houston crossed two genetically identical females with two genetically identical males.  Half of the mice had a running wheel and half did not during their pregnancy.  The second generation mice were removed from the first and kept in a cage without a running wheel or visual ability from their mothers running on the wheel.  The results were that the second generation mice from the active running mice during her pregnancy were also active.  The second generation mice from the in-active mother was not as active as well. 

  From these results scientist concludes that there is a clear implication “that a mother’s activity during pregnancy likely affects the physical activity of her offspring.” 

  I found this article to be a bit random, because there are so many factors that prevents physical activity during a pregnancy.  Also, during the first year of youth, a baby goes through many growth spurts and a significant change during the fourth and fifth year.  How can a child’s future activeness or inactiveness be dependent on a mother’s pregnancy process?  Although, these are studies based on mice experiments and scientist hope to find a link between mother’s activeness during pregnancy to her offspring’s future in humans; I don't feel that a mothers physical activeness dictates her child's future activeness.