研究生英语课件以及课后详细答案第6单元.pptVIP

Unit Six; Questions;Text; A quick trawl through the headlines of the 1990s finds a similar fate for other frontgenetic breakthroughs. Despite much-publicized discoveries of genes for schizophrenia, manic-depression, alcoholism and bipolar disorder, the precise genetic component of these illnesses continue to elude science. The same goes for personality traits. The much-trumpeted discovery of a “novelty-seeking gene” in 1996 hasn’t been replicated—nor have various “depression genes”. This is not to say that progress isn’t being made in parsing the biological components of behavior. But in any given person, the interplay of genes and the environment is a horrendously complex story. Individual genes produce quite subtle effects, and the more we learn about DNA, the clearer it is that any particular gene’s potential can be shut down or enhanced by complex biochemical pathways contingent upon things like sleep, nutrition and stress. ; A decade ago the field of behavior genetics was aflutter with the hope that molecular biology would home in on what makes each of us tick. But “the fog is lifting very slowly,” says Kenneth Kender, a professor of psychiatric genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “We’ve learned that in psychiatric disorders, there are no single genes of really large effect. If there were, we’d have found them already.” Genes for certain conditions, such as Huntington’s or sickle cell disease, are known as simple Mendelian traits because they follow the straightforward model of inheritance noted by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel last century. “Mendelian traits are like a trumpet call. The genetic signal blasts right through,” says Kender. “But the genetic effects in most behavioral disorders and traits are like whispers in a busy train station. It’s hard to distinguish them from the background noise.”; That behavior is a tricky business to predict was elegantly demonstrated by another study published in Scienc