And it might have as much to do with our thoughts and behavior patterns as with our genes.
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We are all different, the products both of our genes and our experiences.
There's not much we can do about our genes (not at present, anyway).
We probably have this risk capacity in our genes (see " Blessed Are the Hypomanic, " Digital Rules, June 19).
We probably have this risk capacity in our genes (click here for more " Blessed Are the Hypomanic" ).
"We should trust people who share our genes, build friendships with them, but not go to bed with them, " he said.
As Dr. Pagel comments: "Our genes' gamble at handing over control to...ideas paid off handsomely" in the conquest of the world.
WSJ: Matt Ridley on the Ideas in Mark Pagel's Wired for Culture | Mind & Matter
This approach - dubbed pharmacogenetics - is based on understanding how our genes act to control our body's response to drugs.
"It also lets us explore the similarities and differences between our genes and those of gorilla, the largest living primate, " he added.
CNN: First gorilla genome map offers clues to human evolution
Nutritional genomics is the study of how foods affect our genes and how our genes affect our response to nutrients in our diet.
The latest theories propose that our happiness levels are 50% down to our genes, 10% down to our circumstances and 40% down to intentional activity.
Eventually, understandings gleaned from our genes will lead to targeted drugs.
It forms the baseline, he says, from which to move forwards and really explore why and when our genes and those of the great apes diverged.
CNN: First gorilla genome map offers clues to human evolution
Dr. Pagel's idea is that cultures are an extension of this: that the way we use culture is to promote the long-term interests of our genes.
WSJ: Matt Ridley on the Ideas in Mark Pagel's Wired for Culture | Mind & Matter
We probably have this risk capacity in our genes.
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Pinker believes we live in a world that prefers to see the mind as a blank page ready to be overwritten by culture rather than something already shaped by our genes and evolution.
Our species benefited from our ability to make good decisions based on what we know is likely to happen in the future, thus, keeping us alive long enough to make babies and spread our genes.
It's during our childhoods that we Homo sapiens distance ourselves from the commands of our genes and develop the unique traits that make each of us the charming and talented people we grow up to be.
This funding opens up the possibility of being able to look at the three billion DNA pieces in each of us so we can get a greater understanding of the complex relationship between our genes and lifestyle.
The mechanism of life may be set in motion by our genes, as the mechanism of football is set in motion by our feet, but the feelings we acquire are unique to our own weird walk through time.
The writer Gregg Easterbrook has argued that looking on the dark side may be deep in our genes a survival mechanism from the days of tigers, and well before the bulls and bears that depress us now.
We get half our genes from mom and half from dad, but both Celera and the government-funded group only mapped one half, figuring the basic genetic layout was the same for the genes we get from each parent.
This is a view called "group selection, " because it argues that our genes came down to us today not just because some individuals were more fit than their neighbors, but because some groups were more fit (more cohesive and cooperative) than their neighboring groups.
The joke our genes and our years play on us is to leave us, as parents, forever with this weird column of figures scribbled on our souls, ones that make no sense, no matter how long you squint at them or how hard you try to make them work.
The idea of a Blank Slate has distorted our values in child rearing, sentencing, politics and education, he says, and we have nothing to fear from the idea that we are shaped to some extent by our genes, only a more realistic understanding of what it means to be human.
So unlike most animal parents, we don't just give our children genes and calories, we give them our culture.
Eons ago these messages were delivered by the genes of our vertebrate ancestors on this planet.
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