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A recent paper in Science has revealed that what you learned in your high school biology class -- that you inherit genes from both your mother and father, and their relative contributions are equal -- is more or less bunk.
Of course, we already knew this: some traits related to nervous system development and the immune system are expressions of only one of the two "alleles" you received -- Mom's or Dad's.
The issue is not whether or not you got half your genetic material from your mom or dad (you did) but what your body does with it afterward.
It turns out that cells will randomly express either one allele or the other. This so-called mono-allelic expression means that the copy you got from one parent, the one that isn't talking, totally gets the shaft and isn't expressed at all.
And here's the crazy part: up to 5% of your genes -- or 1,000 of them, if you assume we have around 20,000 genes (which is up for debate) -- could be behaving in this way.
Comments
Liam says:
What if someone was adopted or in foster care?
December 25, 2007 3:18 PM
Scavenger says:
"randomly express either one allele or the other"
I don't think that there is "random" in our law governed systems, i think that the laws that control this choice are yet to get discovered.
December 25, 2007 3:26 PM
chrisgraham says:
Random? There are multiple genetic and social and environmental influences on gene expression. the word random is put in just to massage the 19th century dogma.
December 25, 2007 4:10 PM
shahd says:
i agree
December 26, 2007 1:10 AM
Bill Gilmour says:
But as males and females are born with there germ cells, that is they were made in out mother's wombs, don't we really inherit from our grand parents?
December 26, 2007 4:36 AM
Jo says:
I had put my daughter up for adoption when she was 3 days old. When I found her 25 years later--I laughed out loud when I realized I did not have to raise her to have her turn out to act, sound, and behave just like me. Her entire being is almost my mirror image and I can never be blamed for having raised her that way. Isn't genetics fun!!!
December 26, 2007 12:03 PM
JAC says:
Why do you get us interested in the 60 second science about gene expression, and then send us to a website with no updates since 2004???????????
I expect more from Scientific American,,,,,,,,,,,where to go for more detail?
January 1, 2008 4:38 PM
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