Word: mao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Indeed there's little doubt that violence is the result of an uneasy mix between bad genes and a bad environment. How much control nature has over nurture, however, is the question. Previous studies of the MAO-A gene suggest that interplay may begin in early childhood. A British study of 442 New Zealand men, published in 2003, was among the first to find that those with a low-active MAO-A gene, who had been abused as children, were four times more likely to have committed rapes, robberies and assaults than the general population. Those with high-active MAO...
...What all these risk gene studies show us is that genes do an important job in loading the gun," says Joshua Buckholtz, a neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University's Brain Institute and Department of Psychology, who has written extensively about MAO-A gene. "But it's the environment that pulls the trigger...
...Beaver's study shows, not all carriers of the defective MAO-A gene join a gang, and not all gang members have the defect. It remains largely unknown how common the low-active gene variant is in the general population, though one 2002 study indicated that genetic factors, including MAO-A, account for as much as 50% of the population variance in risk for antisocial behaviors. Additionally, Beaver's and other studies have found that low levels of the MAO-A enzyme affect only men, despite the fact that the MAO-A gene is located on the X chromosome...
...Males, who have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, possess only one copy of this gene, while females, who have two X chromosomes, carry two," Beaver says. "Thus, if a male has a variant for the MAO-A gene that is linked to violence, there isn't another copy to counteract it." (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Beaver cites last month's prevention study as key to understanding how to best make use of his latest findings on MAO-A and gang membership. If policymakers wish to prevent violence, he says, money would be better spent not hunting for gene-based drugs, say, but expanding and improving neighborhood-based intervention programs, such as early childhood education and after-school activities...