Are We Pre-programmed?

Naughty or Nice

by Alex Hutchins

There have been several recent news reports on high school bullying and college hazing and while this is not an article on those topics, it is article suggesting that we may not have a choice in the matter.  From my earliest of recollections, I have always associated the Christmas season with someone being naughty or nice and while that expression of innocence is where is all begins, it mutates into something far worse.  Of course and legal defense teams will love this, we may not have a choice of being naughty or nice.

Preprogramming of Genes

The concept of pre-programming gene expression by histone modifications associated with these genes may play an important role in further research on stem cells and our understanding of the development of disease.

"If we know when this pre-programming takes place after fertilization, we can investigate the mechanisms further and see how development is affected if parts of the process are blocked." 

According to this research, sometime after the female egg is fertilized by the male sperm, a pre-programming of genes takes place.  Once we know when, we can find out how and viola there we are.

Behavioral Genetics

What is Behavioral Genetics?  Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) was the first scientist to study heredity and human behavior from a  systematic point-of-view.

The term "genetics" did not even appear until 1909, only 2 years before Galton's death. With or without a formal name, the study of heredity always has been, at its core, the study of biological variation. Human behavioral genetics, a relatively new field, seeks to understand both the genetic and environmental contributions to individual variations in human behavior.

And so, why is this important?  Well, behaviors involve various combinations of genes and how they form and interact with other genes to produce behaviors.  This is getting interesting.

Intelligent Design

Engineers learning how to program DNA molecules are at the cutting edge of what may be the next great technological revolution, adding to the steam engine, the industrial revolution, and the computer age. And they're doing it with intelligent design.

Welcome to the labs of Caltech's Molecular Programming Project (MPP), where scientists are building machinery, software, and art out of DNA molecules.

Rothemund, a  Senior Research Associate at the MPP, and colleagues have developed ways to assemble DNA molecules into building blocks akin to Lincoln Logs that snap together.

Molecular programming is repeating the history of the computer revolution: first you program with bits, then with assembly language, then with high-level languages, then with objects and modular architecture.

Molecular Computers is where

 this technology is leading us

and then who knows where?

"We are not just puppets of our genes," Poulin tells WebMD. "Genes influence niceness in combination with perceptions of social threat, which come from our past and present experiences."

So although DNA may influence behavior, people do not come pre-programmed to be kind or mean or altruistic or selfish, says lead researcher Michael Poulin, PhD, of the University at Buffalo.

Yeah Right!