Researchers are very interested in studying identical twins who w...

Question

Researchers are very interested in studying identical twins who were raised apart. Among other things, they hope to answer questions about the roles of inheritance and upbringing in human behavior. Why do identical twins make such good subjects for this kind of research? What do the results of such studies suggest to you? What are the potential pitfalls of this research? What abuses might occur in the use of these data if the studies are not evaluated critically?

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone. Let's look at the next question. It says identical twins have the same genotype due to their identical DNA. How do scientists use this to study the heritability of certain traits. Well let's recall from our content video what heritability is. I'm just putting a little definition here and that's the proportion of variation in a trait that can be attributed to genetic factors often expressed as a percent. So these traits can be things like physical traits like eye color or height, traits like intelligence traits, even things like diseases that seem to have a genetic component conditions that seem to have a genetic component like autism or schizophrenia. Um And when you look at how often they occur in identical twins versus only occurring with one twin. That gives really valuable insight into the effects of genetics versus the environment. So you've inherited the same gene. How often do you express that trait? And how is that affected by the environment? And twin studies are particularly useful when scientists study identical twins raised in different environments. So two people the exact same D. N. A. Raised in different environments and that's choice D. Here. Obviously identical twins are usually raised in the same environment in the same household. But there are cases when twins have been raised apart and those twin studies often provide a little lot of really valuable insight again about the impact of genetics versus environment. But let's just look through our other answer choices. Choice A is by manipulating their genome. Well this is not gonna be our answer first of all, we're talking about humans. This isn't ethical. But even if we're talking about animals, um this isn't very useful because we already have examples of animals or people that have different genomes um with valuable in studies of identical twins. As these are people with the exact same D. N. A. Then Choice B. And Choice C. Choice B is by providing them with the same stimulus choice C. Is by using the reward system. These are parts of behavioral studies and so that's kind of too narrow a scope for what we're looking for. Because this is just talking about the heritability of traits, not just behaviors but physical traits, um diseases, genetic conditions, things like that. So Choice B. And Choice C. Are not expressing what we're looking for here. So again, identical twins have the same genotype to do the identical DNA. How do scientists use us to study the heritability of certain traits and its Choice D. By studying identical twins raised in different environments. See you in the next video

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