The Genetic Determinants of Smoking

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING WORD LIMIT REQUIREMENTS:

Please note that each and every assignment has its own word limit.

The twin studies are an essential subject in understanding the link between nature/nurture or genetic/environment. Basically, the twin study demonstrates how many environmental factors affect an individual’s likely hood of developing a health condition vs genetics factors contributing to the development of health conditions. For example, through the observation of a set of monozygotic twins, we learned that the development of a certain health condition had an environmental factor of 80% and a genetic factor of 20%. This means, adjusting the environmental factor would reduce the efficiency of the disease attack ratio on the twins.

An example of using a twin study to examine the gene-environment interaction is smoking development in monozygotic twins. The method of study will be a case-parent approach study, which is a study that uses the parent as a control. The premises of the examination are a smoking-addict mother giving birth to a set of monozygotic twins. Due to the financial situation, one of the twins was given up for adoption. Over a course of 30 years, these twins were observed to see if gene or environment would contribute to the development of smoking. The methods used to collect data is a phenotypic measure by noting how many cigarettes per day were smoked and a genotype measure of analyzing the gene to see if the twins have a smoking allele received from the mother.