Nature and Nurture

Identical twins are not exactly genetically alike. Molecular geneticists from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, arrived at this conclusion after looking at about one million markers of identical twins and parents.

Identical twins are not exactly genetically alike. Molecular geneticists from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, arrived at this conclusion after looking at about one million markers of identical twins and parents. They were studying risks of schizophrenia in twins. ‘The risk of developing schizophrenia is much higher if your brother, sister, mother or father have the disease … we started with the belief that monozygotic (identical) twins are genetically identical, so if one…has schizophrenia, then the risk for the other twin should be 100 per cent, if it is all due to the genes,’ says geneticist Shiva Singh on the university website. But going through past studies, Singh and his team found that the risk of schizophrenia in both twins is only 50 per cent. This means monozygotic twins are not genetically identical and that non-genetic factors can contribute to schizophrenia as well.

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Avantika Bhuyan