• Question: There is a question I would like to ask: how does our DNA affect our abilities/aspects?

    Asked by to Dre, Charli, Heather, Oliver, Becky on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rebecca Williams

      Rebecca Williams answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      That is a very good question and I don’t know the answer. I have had to look it up and do some research to help me answer this question!

      Our DNA and genes make us naturally good at some things. Biologists and scientists who study genes are trying to work out how much they do. For example, scientists who study athletes think that DNA may decide how good an athlete is by a little, or by a lot! More research is needed I think. Of course, practicing and working hard can also make you good at something.

    • Photo: Charlotte Flavell

      Charlotte Flavell answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Our DNA is present in all the cells of our body (except for red blood cells but that’s different story!) and you can think of it like a “cookbook” for the body – telling each cell what it should be and what it should do. DNA is slightly different in everyone and we are all made up of a little bit of our mum’s DNA, mixed with a little bit of our dad’s.

      Imagine you were making a cake, the DNA “instructions” might tell you to add raspberries to one cake, but lemons to another. Even if the rest of the ingredients were the same, you would have two different flavoured cakes. While most of our DNA is basically the same across all humans (and is actually very similar to chimpanzees), it is the small differences that mean that you end up with someone who has blue eyes, while another has brown.

      While our DNA cookbook is very important in deciding who we are, once we are born our DNA tends to stay the same. What happens to us during our life then becomes important to decide what we will be like as a person. For example, you may have been born with DNA that means you will end up growing very tall, but you will only be a good basketball player if you practice really hard!

    • Photo: Oliver George

      Oliver George answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      This is a really big question and scientists aren’t really too sure about this. I think it’s likely to be both DNA and the things we encounter that shape our abilities/aspects.

      A good example would be if you took identical twins (who have the same DNA) and give them different diets (one really unhealthy, the other super healthy) then they would likely be very different after a few years despite having the same DNA.

      There’s a huge amount of people working on trying to understand DNA and there are new things being found out almost daily. This is a super difficult question (well done!) and I keep thinking of things that are interesting but I don’t really have space to explain them all!

Comments