Nature or nurture? While it is widely argued which aspect has more influence on who we are, I believe that we can use our understanding of nature to learn about the impacts of nurture.
ATGCGTACATG
These four letters, over and over again, spell out words, sentences, and entire paragraphs of instructions for our body. These four letters make up the core of our genetic code, the unique book that is written and rewritten inside trillions of cells.
Adenine. Thymine. Guanine. Cytosine.
These seemingly simple sequences of nitrogenous bases, sugar-phosphate backbones, and hydrogen bonds form genes–genes that tell a story. This story is then copied into mRNA, where the thymines are swapped out for uracils. Sometimes these stories are embellished a bit by their storytellers; parts of the story are simply not transcribed, or one letter is substituted for another in a fateful typo, a mutation.
Then the story makes its way out of the bubble, the nucleus, and into the bustling “big world” known as cytoplasm. It is fed through a ribosome, which pieces together amino acids to build up a new, powerful protein. A protein that can do things and take action. A protein that can change the world.
Yet even the tiniest change can have profound consequences. A single letter can alter a codon, and the translated amino acid is different. A different amino acid can have different chemical interactions with other molecules, which can lead to an entirely different formation of a protein. A single letter, essentially a typo, can radically shape a protein. Even the tiniest change can have a far-reaching impact on the function of an organic molecule, resulting in a ripple effect.
Our genetic material has shown us that we are all unique. We all have individual experiences that are combined to produce our identities.
We have the same foundational letters, but with slight variations in the arrangements. We are all born as crying babies, but some of us are surrounded by loving parents, siblings, cousins, and grandparents, while others are left to fend for themselves.
The DNA of our birth is slowly transcribed into the mRNA of our childhood and adolescence–making a few changes here and there, leaving some letters behind. We all grow up and grow into ourselves; we gain and lose friends, rebelliously dye our hair, and cut ourselves off from toxic relationships. In other words, we grow up, but remain mostly the same.
Then comes adulthood; we translate ourselves into a whole new vision by executing our dreams and exceeding our own expectations for what we could become. Transformed from a strand of mRNA to a clumped protein, a whole new organic molecule, shaped by all the mutations encountered along the way. A single mutation could have changed the course of all of this; a single experience, a loss, or a gain could change where we end up or who we become.
Instead of a competition between nature and nurture, we can look to the journey of our genetic material through nature as a model for our own journey through life, our nurture.
