Smash Notes
Heredity & Me
You've probably heard someone say, "She takes after her father." But what does that really mean? How do we inherit certain traits and characteristics? Writer Carl Zimmer joins us to answer your calls about what heredity means, how it plays out, and whether you should consider taking a DNA test. His book, She Has Her Mother's Laugh, is now available in…
People
Notes
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He likes to explore things we know a little about, but don’t think about. Carl Zimmer likes to write books about things that he can to investigate. As he says when investigating a topic, the bottom falls out.
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When he was considering the topic of heredity, he thought about what’s normally talked about with heredity. We talk about it all the time as we make connections when different generations having similar traits.
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It’s because we tend to think that genes and things like laughter are the same, but they’re not. We inherit genes, carbon copies of genes from our parents, but other things do get carried down.
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Overall, no one knows what these genes do or how they connect, but the heredity connection is evident. They all weave together and influence each other.
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On Science Rules with Bill Nye, in Heredity & Me, Carl Zimmer explains that the variants that make hair lighter also make the pigment in the skin lighter, which is why redheads are pale. He points to his own daughter, who is quite pale and has some red in her hair, and says she gets that from her Irish mother. The caller on the line is Andrew. Zimmer is the author of She Has Her Mother's Laugh, the book the hosts recommend at the end of the episode.
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In addition to inheriting genes, you inherit the molecules around the genes that control whether they’re turned on or off. These molecules can also change due to experiences. Yet, the evidence and sample size in humans is tiny and cannot be proven completely true.
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Unfortunately, science cannot answer this for someone individually. Science can look at averages from lots of people. Genes play a role on average, but we can’t specify this gene in relation of heredity from a parent.
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According to Zimmer, scientists are still struggling with this curiosity. You can pinpoint the genes that influence your height, but there are thousands of them that have been linked. It’s the combination of genes, not just what’s on our DNA.
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Carl Zimmer tells Bill Nye and Corey Powell, on Science Rules in the episode Heredity & Me, that the gain in height since earlier centuries is not a genetic change. It comes from diet, clean water, and medicine. He makes that point and the show moves on to a caller asking whether personality is fixed at birth. Zimmer is the author of She Has Her Mother's Laugh.
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Yes, there are lots of things in life that can influence a person’s personality. Scientists are also looking at hundreds and thousands of people taking personality tests to see if they share the same genes.
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According to Bill Nye, there’s a belief or presumption that there’s a connection between family members that they would share. On the show, it would be discovered. Zimmer states it’s because we are adapted to care more about our family.
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When you make a carbon copy, the copy is actually imperfect. The letters in DNA that are being passed down are not the same, but like a sampling of the DNA of our ancestors.
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Carl Zimmer tells Science Rules with Bill Nye that being left-handed or right-handed seems to be inherited, but that scientists cannot find the genes that would prove it. The conversation is the episode Heredity & Me. Zimmer wrote She Has Her Mother's Laugh, the heredity book Bill Nye and Corey Powell recommend at the end of the episode.
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It is partly inheritable because it's about 50-70%.
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No, you can't.
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Zimmer states that yes, it is good to buy the kits, but only if the person is willing to put in the work to understand the results. This includes reading and looking up the results instead of just looking at them.
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There are lots of genes that are involved in hair, so it doesn’t necessarily rely on that speculation anymore. Color blindness is applicable since it’s on the X chromosome.
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No, this is false.
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