Scientists appear to have discovered the answer to the long standing debate of nature versus nurture.
In a new study of epigenetics, they have found that this traditional debate is indeed irrelevant, as your life is not only directly influenced by your genes, but by the experiences of your grandparents - such as their diet and activities.
This field of “epigenetic inheritance” suggests environmental factors control switches, which are able to turn genes on and off. These switches can cause inherited effects, when transmitted through generations.
Research in Britain has shown that fathers who smoked during their slow growth period before puberty, between nine and twelve years of age, had sons whom at the age of nine were significantly more overweight than average.
Additionally, research into the records of a small Swedish town, Overkalix, showed that when famine occurred in the father’s “slow growth” period, fewer of his sons died early; but when over-eating occurred in the paternal grandfather’s generation at this same time period, the number of sons dying from all types of diseases increased.
However, the granddaughter’s results did not correlate with these findings, which had shown a link between the availability of food in an individuals “slow growth” period, and their descendents risk of heart disease and diabetes.
This suggests that single environmental changes (such as diet) can affect descendents in sex-specific ways. But accepting this, sex-chromosomes can’t be proven to be the reason behind this.
Therefore epigenetics proves that nature and nurture are conjointly affecting our development and lives; and warns us that our lifestyles not only affect us, but our future generations.
Amy Quinn (4209678)
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3312230/Science-Grandfather-made-me-what-I-am.html
