Genetics 04: Nature vs. Nurture
遺傳學 04: 先天與後天

Nature and nurture are two fundamental concepts of how people are developed the way they are. John Locke suggested that new born babies are like blank papers, which means they will gain their characteristics from their life experience. In contrast, Francis Galton believed that the characteristics and intelligence are more influenced by an individual's inherited factors. These two concepts also often work together to influence a person's characteristics, because a person's nature factors can often affect their nurture factors and vice versa. Epigenetic is the study about how nurture factors can change the way a person's genes are expressed. The debate of wether nature or nurture has a greater impact to a person's life is still brought up very often. However, modern technologies allowed us to know that a person's life is not only affect by one type of factor but a mix of both. Researches have also shown that it seemed like nurture factors play a greater role in a person's life when it comes to forging their personality.

Epigenetics is the study of change in genetic expression that happen in a person's nurture. Methylation is a one of the processes that can change the way a DNA is read by attaching a chemical group onto the part of the DNA. Histone modification is when the histones (the structure DNAs wrap around to keep them in places) are too tightly packed, this can potentially prevent the DNA to be read thus change the way the cell is expressed. Non-coding RNA is a kind of RNA that DNA produces to control the coding-RNA (a kind of RNA that makes protein) responsible for certain traits to deactivate them. Epigenetics can happen before you are born or as you age, but all the changes caused by Epigenetics are reversible.

https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm#:~:text=Epigenetics%20is%20the%20study%20of,body%20reads%20a%20DNA%20sequence

“Nature vs Nurture” is a topic/debate about which one, genetics or experiences affect how someone's life more. Today, this topic is called “genetics” and “environment because one's environment includes a broader range of experiences than just the nurturing received from parents or caregivers. Even though this topic has been discussed for hundreds of years, people still do not have a definite answer about which is more important to human psychology because some factors are more related to genes and others are more related to the environment. For example, autism appears to be more heritable than depression but, psychological traits are shaped by a balance of interacting genetic and non-genetic influences. Another example would be personality, which is partially heritable yet, less than half of the difference between people on measures of personality traits can be attributed to genes (estimate is 40 percent)

The Relative Age Effect is the consequence of grouping people of different ages into the same group. This issue is especially prevalent in sports for young children, when they are a few months a part in age, the older kid will most likely have more phsyical strength and height. Furthermore, the older kid might have more experience in the sport which will give them a huge advantage. All this can lead to the younger kid to stop participating in that sport and affect their growth becuase excercise is very important to kids. To combat this issue, people could change classification systems to use, have multiple squads based on multiple standards also, coaches or people picking players should be more aware of this phenomenon so that they can counteract this issue instead of amplify this issue.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Grondin/publication/222696357_Unequal_Competition_as_an_Impediment_to_Personal_Development_A_Review_of_the_Relative_Age_Effect_in_Sport/links/5e794636299bf1b2b9ac02fa/Unequal-Competition-as-an-Impediment-to-Personal-Development-A-Review-of-the-Relative-Age-Effect-in-Sport.pdf