Does Crime Leave a Genetic Trace?

gallifreyan99 writes "Scientists have spent decades trying to understand and fix social problems like violence and alcoholism, usually focusing on the poor and disadvantaged. But now a small band of researchers is claiming that biology plays a vitally important role — because trauma can change you at a genetic level that gets passed on to kids, grandkids, and perhaps even beyond." Part of the research involved testing the effect of stress on the genetics of mice. A number of mice were subjected to stressful situations and then allowed to raise their children. The children, when later subjected to stress, were more vulnerable to it than normal mice (for example, they would stop struggling in a potentially fatal situation earlier than 'happy' mice). This was expected. What's interesting is that when those children were later bred with normal mice, and that third generation was raised by normal mice (so that parental neglect wasn't a factor), they still showed the same vulnerability to stress. A subsequent generation showed the same.

Comments

Re:What about cats?

[ArcadeMan]

The cat translator is still in early stages, however the reply was more or less "it tastes like chicken".

I'm posting AC, but I have a low UID

[Anonymous Coward]

The reasons should be plainly apparent:

My family was in no way disadvantaged. My father came from a family of modest means, but he was raised in a comfortable home in the country that his father built himself.

My father was a raging alcoholic, violently and sexually abusive to me, verbally abusive to my mother, sexually abusive to my sister.

But he was a good provider. He was a career military officer who retired at thirty, and served honorably in vietnam.

When I was a boy I was brutally bullied by my classmates. I don't know what I did to bring that on, but it was everything I could do to survive elementary school. Why didn't the teachers or the principal intervene when I was being beaten?

The result now is that while I am not an alcoholic, I surely would be if I ever touched alcohol. That becomes plainly apparent to me if I ever do get drunk so I choose not to drink.

I am fucked up beyond all repair. I've spent a lot of time in psychiatric hospitals.

I have a degree and am a good coder, but it is very difficult to provide for myself. I do my best to do right by others, but I myself am poor and disadvantaged. If I can get a job at all I earn more than 100K, but it is very difficult for me to get a job that I can tolerate.

Re:I'm posting AC, but I have a low UID

[SternisheFan]

I am fucked up beyond all repair.

No, you're not. The fact that you're you are alive proves that you're a tough survivor.

Kids do not have power over adults who bullied them. As a grown adult you do have the power over screwed up, bullying controlling types. Power to not allow it to happen to you again, at least not without one hell of a good fight from you. You are now stronger than you might realize right now, but strong you are. That strength may come in very handy as you go through life. While your growth as a child was changed, you are not 'fucked'. You would not do the things that were done to you to another human being. That makes you way better than the cowards who harmed you back then. I salute you. Keep on moving forward, maybe just so the bastards don't ''win''.

Re:Lamarck Vindicated?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ehhhhh...I wouldn't go that far. Lamarkianism relies on a feedback mechanism to pump info back into genes, which is far more complicated that natural selection, where variation introduces info into genes, then the less-well-adapted genes survive less well and are replaced in subsequent generations by omission.

This is probably more related to epigenetics, where certain chunks of DNA are coated to stop their effect, and this can be responsive to the environment as well as passed down to children.

Also the exact causal relationships, if any, between stress, abdominal belly fat deposition (in the gut), and things like heart disease and insulin resistance, and even bacterial fauna population differences is also a hot area of research, and much of thatccan be passed on via non-DNA methods.