According to new research by scientists at the University of Utah, the study explains how mom and dad genes shape behaviour, as each parent has a unique influence on hormones and other chemical messengers that control behaviour and mood. The findings of the research were published in the journal ‘Cell Reports’. Parenting is not the only way how a mom or dad impact the behaviour of their offsprings but Genes matter too. Although our genes are inherited in pairs, but one copy from each parent, mom and dad exert their genetic influence in different ways.
According to Christopher Gregg, PhD, principal investigator and associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology, there is an untapped area of biology that controls our decisions.
For a crucial step in the treatment and diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, there is a clear picture of the genetic factor that shapes the behaviour.
According to the reports from Gregg’s research team, there are a certain group of cells in the brain of mice that exclusively rely on the mother’s copy of a gene, which is needed to produce essential chemical messengers in the brain known as neurotransmitters.
The father’s copy of the gene in those cells remains switched off, however, in different organs, the adrenal gland and certain cells favour the father’s copy of the same gene. Here, the gene is involved in producing the stress hormone, adrenaline.
After identifying the unexpected switch in parental control of a single gene, the team demonstrated that each parent’s gene affects the son and daughter in a different manner, wherein the certain decisions in the daughter were controlled by the father’s gene, and certain decisions in a son were controlled by mother’s gene.
According to Gregg, these findings were the first step toward understanding how parents’ genes would affect the related health conditions and more routine behaviours in people, from Alzheimer’s disease, mental illness and addiction to cancer.