Learning Biology

FOR KIDS: DOUBLE TAKE

Emily Sohn

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39172/title/FOR_KIDS_Double_take

Devan Neal

January 5, 2009

Prior to reading this article, I had a little bit of knowledge on this subject.  I knew that there could be two types of twins; idenctical and fraternal.  I was aware that in identicle twins, they recieved the exact same combination of chromosomes from both their mother and father.  Also, that fraternal twins were concieved when two eggs were fertalized.  The difference between the two sets of twins is that identical twins are the same in many ways, i.e. looks.   The purpose of this research was to settle the debate between nature and nurture.  The essential question in the article is, “What makes us who we are, nature (genes) or nuture (environment)?”  This is a necessary research question because it allows us to have a better grasp on understanding how complex humans are.  Do genes determine whether we like sports, or if we’re good at art?  Or are our personalities a result of the way we are raised and the environment we’re raised in?  For their research, the scientists collected a variety of information from each family, using questionnaires, DNA samples, brain wave patterns and more.  Every few years since the work began, the scientists have met with the same families and have done many of the same tests.  The Minnesota researchers now have information about more than 10,000 people. From this large set of data, the scientists have turned up a lot of interesting results.

One thing the research showed was that identical twins are far more alike that fraternal twins in many ways, even when those identicle twins are raised apart.  Also that fraternal twins are more similar than virtual twins.  These similarities are true for a large number of personality traits, such as how outgoing people are, how aggressive they are and what types of decisions they tend to make.  These results suggest that genes play important roles in determining our personalities.  Identical twins also tend to become more similar to each other with age. That’s probably because as they get older they have more control over what they do and how they live.  Conclusions that can be drawn from this information would figuratively set the stone on the “nature” side of the argument.  This can be backed by the survey results of identical twins raised apart.  Research was conducted and advised by Matthew McGue, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and other coleagues at the university.

“Twinning is a mystery,” McGue says. “There’s no end to questions.” Therefore, researchers want to know why sometimes only one twin develops a serious disease. What is it about the environment that pushes certain genes to turn on or off?  I would still like to know if diseases developed by both twins will have the same magnitude, and ultimately end the same way?  I can connect this to my life because I know several sets of twins and some are identical and some are fraternal.  These twins show exactly what this article was talking about.