ESPEYB15 14 Science and Medicine Nurtured by our parent’s genes (1 abstracts)
14.15 The nature of nurture: Effects of parental genotypes
Kong A , Thorleifsson G , Frigge ML , Vilhjalmsson BJ , Young AI , Thorgeirsson TE , Benonisdottir S , Oddsson A , Halldorsson BV , Masson G , Gudbjartsson DF , Helgason A , Bjornsdottir G , Thorsteinsdottir U & Stefansson K
deCODE genetics/Amgen, Reykjavik, Iceland
To read the full abstract: Science 2018;359:424-428
This ground-breaking study shows that your genetic make-up may influence your appearance, behaviour and health risks, not only by acting directly on your biology, but also indirectly, through the effects on your parents and how they cared and “nurtured” you. Such parental effects are obvious for very early life traits, such as birth weight, where there are well-known examples of maternal alleles that alter pregnancy glycaemia and hence influence fetal growth and adiposity. However, here, similar effects are shown for many long-lasting traits, including educational attainment, adult height and BMI, age at first child, and cigarette smoking. Unsurprisingly, for many nutritional and health-related traits, they found that mothers have stronger nurturing effects than fathers. Although not studied here, similar indirect effects could manifest between siblings. These indirect effects inflate estimates of the direct effects of genetic variants. Furthermore, the analyses allow quantification of the effects of another source of such overestimation, that due to assertive mating – which is the phenomenon whereby we choose partners who are more likely to resemble ourselves both physically and mentally. The findings highlight the importance of family data and underline the important message that our genes do not totally determine our behaviours and health outcomes. We have the power to modify our genetic susceptibilities through our lifestyle and health choices, both for ourselves and for our children.
Volume 15
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ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology
ISSN 1662-4009 (Online)
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