Nature vs Nature

Nature vs nurture: outcome depends on where you live

The balance of nature and nurture in influencing how a child grows up varies depending on where they live, according to a new study.

Both nature (meaning our genes) and nurture (the environment we grow up in) are known to significantly affect traits like our height and weight, our IQ, and our chance of developing behavioural problems or autism.

But how strong environmental factors are in determining each characteristic, compared with the influence of DNA, differs significantly across the country, scientists have found.

Researchers from King's College London studied 45 childhood characteristics in 6,759 pairs of identical and non-identical twins across the UK, to determine whether their genes or their environment was more important.

A new series of "nature-nurture" maps produced by the team revealed that some areas are "environmental hotspots" for particular traits, but in other places the same attribute is mainly governed by genetics.

For example, across most of the country 60 per cent of the variation in children's behaviour at school - whether they were unruly or not - was down to their genes.

But in London environment played a greater role - possibly because wealth varies so dramatically within communities, meaning twins growing up on the same street are more likely to fall in with different groups of friends who could influence their behaviour.

Dr Oliver Davis, who led the Wellcome Trust-funded study, published in the Molecular Psychiatry journal, said: "There are any number of environments that vary geographically in the UK, from social environments like health care or education provision to physical environments like altitude, the weather or pollution.

“The message that these maps really drive home is that your genes aren't your destiny. There are plenty of things that can affect how your particular human genome expresses itself, and one of those things is where you grow up."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9326819/Nature-vs-nurture-outcome-depends-on-where-you-live.html

My comments:
The points that this article makes are valid and I agree with most of them as I don't believe that there is one set answer to the nature-nurture debate.
I think that how people behave is partially due to genes, whether people gleam traits from their parents or gain genes for certain illnesses. However some traits maybe be influenced by the people and environment they grew up it. 
Some children, it is believed, grow up to become violent due to abuse when they were young, which is an argument sometimes for John Venables and Robert Johnson in the James Bulger case. People also think that video games and books may influence people into doing whatever, although others argue that this may not just be the case. with children being brought up in families with stronger morals that still witness bad things yet know the difference between right and wrong.

Referring to the article above, my mother is an identical twin who grew up with her twin (in London) and they were joined at the hip, sharing groups of friend- most probably being each others best friends. This therefore contradicts the articles comment "twins growing up on the same street are more likely to fall in with different groups of friends who could influence their behaviour". The two of them are also similar in the way they behave, speak, dress etc. suggesting to me that it maybe genes that influence their similarities, seeing as they share much of the same, or that it might in fact be due to the environment they grew up in. Therefore in conclusion I don't think there is a simple answer to the debate, varying from case to case.