REPRINTS AND REFLECTIONS Transmission through the female line of a mechanism constraining human fetal growthy
نویسنده
چکیده
Cross-breeding experiments between large and small strains of mammals have shown the powerful influence of the maternal organism on the control of fetal growth. The prepotency of a maternal regulator has also been demonstrated in humans. Our earlier studies indicated that this regulator acts by means of constraint; there is no equivalent accelerating mechanism. Data on 1092 siblings and 5207 paternal and maternal relatives of 986 probands show different patterns of birthweight among families ascertained, respectively, through very large and very small babies. When constraint is relaxed the Mendelian laws of inheritance are clearly followed. At the lower extreme there is evidence for the transmission of constraint through the female line only. This could be due to the maternal genotype, but our data suggest that a non-Mendelian path might also be involved. Such a process would be adaptive, facilitating fairly fast changes in fetal growth rate as the conditions under which a population lives deteriorate or improve.
منابع مشابه
Reprints and Reflections
One of the most important findings that has emerged from human behavioral genetics involves the environment rather than heredity, providing the best available evidence for the importance of environmental influences on personality, psychopathology, and cognition. The research also converges on the remarkable conclusion that these environmental influences make two children in the same family as d...
متن کاملReflections on Rheumatoid Hands.
3. Information on permissions/orders of reprints in rheumatology and related fields. Silverman featuring research articles on clinical subjects from scientists working is a monthly international serial edited by Earl D.
متن کاملReprints and Reflections
This paper is a review of experiments, performed in our laboratory during the past 20 years, designed to analyse the significance of different components of random variability in quantitative traits in laboratory rats and mice. Reduction of genetic variability by using inbred strains and reduction of environmental variability by highly standardized husbandry in laboratory animals did not remark...
متن کاملReprints and Reflections
The sick-man may be said to have disappeared from medical cosmology in two related senses during the period 1770–1870. Firstly, as control over the means of production of medical knowledge shifted away from the sick towards medical investigators the universe of discourse of medical theory changed from that of an integrated conception of the whole person to that of a network of bonds between mic...
متن کاملReprints and Reflections
In this contribution we put forward a novel hypothesis concerning the aetiology of Type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes mellitus. The concept underlying our hypothesis is that poor foetal and early post-natal nutrition imposes mechanisms of nutritional thrift upon the growing individual. We propose that one of the major long-term consequences of inadequate early nutrition is impaired develop...
متن کامل