Genetics 04: Nature vs. Nurture

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.