It is scientifically silly to say that a persons life is controlled by the stars. However facts begins to show that the time in a year a child is born has some effects on that child's genetic make up, thus affecting the behavior. How? Patiently read the explanation.
Children born during the dry months of the
year in Gambia bear modifications to their DNA that may have all sorts
of implications for their lifelong health, scientists report April 29 in
Nature Communications. But far from demonstrating that the
stars control our destiny, the research shows that the environment a
mother experiences, and especially what she eats, around the time of
conception can have a profound effect on the behavior of her child’s
genes throughout life.
Being conceived by a starving mother, for
example, may ramp up genetic processes that stretch out calories in hard
times.Babies conceived in Gambia during the rainy season, when
nutrient-dense veggies are available, had differences in certain tags
that affect how genes behave compared with babies conceived during the
dry season, when calories abound but nutrients are scarcer.
The
different seasons influenced six parts of the babies’ genomes. These
changes weren’t to the primary DNA code—the C’s, G’s, T’s and A’s that
make up our genetic playbook. Instead they attached important
decorations on the DNA molecules that regulate how the DNA works. These
attachments, called epigenetic marks, leave the sequence itself
untouched but modify its activity, sometimes by dialing it down.
Scientists
don’t yet know whether the particular changes found in the Gambian
babies have important consequences. But results from other studies, many
of which are described by my Tina Hesman Saey from in her March
2013 feature From Great Grandma to You, suggest that these decorations aren’t just for looks.
The
horrific Dutch famine during the winter of 1944 to 1945, for instance,
offered a way to study how nutrition affects the epigenome. People born
to mothers who were pregnant during that Hunger Winter had altered tags
on a gene called IGF2 that regulates human growth and metabolism, scientists have found, an effect that has persisted for more than 60 years.
Other
research focuses on the opposite, a situation that’s more common in the
United States: people born to obese parents. Obese mothers are more
likely to have obese children, and some scientists think that part of
the reason for that is epigenetic changes. Dads aren’t off the hook,
either. Obese men have daughters have too little of a certain tag on the
IGF2 gene, scientists reported last year.
So
far, most of the other studies on epigenetics have focused on
potentially harmful things. Stress, smoking, alcohol and pollutants have
all been shown to influence the behavior of genes.
But the news
isn’t all dismal. A notable exception comes from research on exercise.
Working out during pregnancy, for instance, seems to change the behavior
of some genes in a good way, studies on mice have found.
Many
of these studies don’t follow the effects through many generations, so
it’s not clear whether the alterations actually do persist for eons. But
the suggestion is that certain aspects of the environment, like whether
there’s enough food around, can influence our genetic history.
This is all to say that the behavior of your genes is
not written in the stars. Nor is the behavior of your children’s or
their children’s. Genes are susceptible to very real influences here on
Earth that, unlike astrology, can prepare us to meet our fate.
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