reasonable_doubter
Banned
Overall, they found that most genes showed parent-of-origin effects in their levels of expression, and that paternal genes consistently won out. For up to 60 percent of the mouse’s genes, the copy from dad was more active than the copy from mom. This imbalance resulted in mice babies whose brains were significantly more like dad’s, genetically speaking.
The researchers believe the same is likely true in all mammals. “We now know that mammals express more genetic variance from the father,” says Pardo-Manuel de Villena. “So imagine that a certain kind of mutation is bad. If inherited from the mother, the gene wouldn’t be expressed as much as it would be if it were inherited from the father. So, the same bad mutation would have different consequences in disease if it were inherited from the mother or from the father.”
The findings, which were published this week in Nature Genetics, add a new wrinkle into our understanding of inherited diseases. Knowing an imbalance exists in how your parents’ genes affect you could help scientists treat and predict diseases more accurately.
Genetically Speaking, You're More Like Your Dad
The researchers believe the same is likely true in all mammals. “We now know that mammals express more genetic variance from the father,” says Pardo-Manuel de Villena. “So imagine that a certain kind of mutation is bad. If inherited from the mother, the gene wouldn’t be expressed as much as it would be if it were inherited from the father. So, the same bad mutation would have different consequences in disease if it were inherited from the mother or from the father.”
The findings, which were published this week in Nature Genetics, add a new wrinkle into our understanding of inherited diseases. Knowing an imbalance exists in how your parents’ genes affect you could help scientists treat and predict diseases more accurately.
Genetically Speaking, You're More Like Your Dad
