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Zusammenfassung von She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

Name: She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
Rating: 4.5 (47 reviews)
Author: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer

The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

4.5 (47 Bewertungen)

24 Min.

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Family Planning Life Sciences

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She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
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What’s in it for me? Discover the riches of your genetic inheritance.

If you’ve ever been to a family reunion, you’ve probably been told that you have your grandmother’s eyebrows, your uncle’s smile, or something along these lines. It’s accepted wisdom that genetic features, from height to male pattern baldness, are passed down from generation to generation.

But do we have the whole picture when it comes to how genetic inheritance works?

Our understanding of the mechanics of familial inheritance shifts dramatically over time and between cultures. In some early South American societies, any man who had sex with a woman was considered the father of her children. Meanwhile, the Hawaiian language doesn’t distinguish between sisters and female cousins.

As these diverse interpretations of genetic inheritance show, heredity is complex and our conceptions of it are constantly evolving. These blinks will give you a deeper insight into heredity and its intersections with science, medicine, culture, and history.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

what links a nineteenth-century Moravian monk to contemporary genetic research;
how genetics had a hand in the downfall of the Habsburg dynasty; and
why some people are lactose intolerant and others aren’t.

Inheritance is both a cultural construct and a biological process.

What comes to mind when you think of inheritance? Genes? Wealth? Status? Actually, it encompasses all of these things. Inheritance is a complex concept, one with both biological and cultural implications, as the story of the Habsburgs shows.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the Habsburgs were among Europe’s most powerful dynasties, ruling over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They secured their power through the dominant cultural model of inheritance: the throne passed from father to son upon the father’s death.

Long before genetics became a field of scientific study, it was the basis for the transfer of wealth, status, and power in societies throughout the world, through inheritance.

In Western Europe, the Roman system of hereditas, in which a deceased person’s estate was passed on to their heir, or inheritor, was prevalent up until the Middle Ages.

On top of hereditas, the Renaissance introduced the concept of blood inheritance. It was believed that traits such as intelligence and courage were contained within and transmitted through blood, from parent to offspring. Nobles, in particular, were loathe to taint their “superior” blood by intermingling it with that of people outside their class.

But it was basing their inheritance on blood and biology that proved to be the Habsburgs’ undoing. They had the most rarefied blood in Europe and were preoccupied with keeping it untainted, so they only married those within a select gene pool. Genes are units of hereditary information carried within our cells. What scientists now know – and what the Habsburgs didn’t know – is that cultivating genetic variation, rather than purity, is key for avoiding genetic diseases.

After centuries of inbreeding, generations of Habsburgs were born with various genetic diseases, including hunched backs, pigeon chests, malformed jaws, and mental illnesses. Infertility is another side effect of inbreeding and so Habsburg kings started struggling to produce heirs – so much so that, eventually, the Habsburg dynasty died out.

Ironically, in 1592, during the dying days of the Habsburg empire, Luis Mercado was appointed court physician. In 1603, Mercado published a seminal early work, likely influenced by his connection to the Habsburgs; his book On Hereditary Diseases suggested that physical traits and illnesses could – much like a crown – be passed down from one generation to the next.

The forefather of genetics was a nineteenth-century Austrian monk.

What does a nineteenth-century Moravian monk have to do with the emergence of genetics? Quite a lot, actually.

Gregor Mendel was a young monk of the conservative Augustinian order, teaching math and science at a priory in rural Austria, when he was sent to the University of Vienna for further training. When he returned to the priory in 1853, he continued his scientific education independently.

DNA has revolutionized genealogical testing.

In the annals of courtroom history, cases of disputed paternity go back a long way. But it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that judges and juries were able to look to biological evidence to settle these cases.

One early, high-profile paternity dispute took place in Hollywood in 1942, when the actress Joan Barry claimed that Charlie Chaplin was the father of her daughter, Carol Ann. She sued him for child support and prenatal costs.

Genetics isn’t the only factor that determines our height.

In Georgian London, two people with dwarfism named Judith and Robert Skinner made their living by exhibiting themselves as “curiosities.” They soon earned enough money to retire and start a family. At the time, it was common for people with dwarfism to earn a living like this. What the Skinners did next, though, was less common. Having run out of money, they went on tour again, this time with their children. This second iteration of the Skinner’s exhibition attracted even more public interest. Why? Because the Skinners’ children were all of average height.

Geneticists have long been fascinated by height as an inherited trait. On the one hand, it’s clear to see that tall parents often produce tall children and short parents often produce short offspring. On the other hand, this blueprint doesn’t hold true 100 percent of the time – some children differ wildly in height from their parents. So, what’s going on?

We don’t always inherit a discrete set of DNA.

In 1953, a woman known as Mrs. McK went to donate blood. But once scientists analyzed her blood sample, they found something surprising. Mrs. McK had a mixture of type A and type O blood running in her veins. There are four blood types: A, B, AB, and O. Type OA blood was, seemingly, a genetic impossibility.

The scientists concluded that Mrs. McK must have been the recipient of a botched blood transfusion. But Mrs. McK had never had a transfusion.

There’s a reason that single cells can produce complex lifeforms.

When does life begin?

Scientifically speaking, it begins with a single-celled zygote, an egg that’s been fertilized by sperm. Inside the zygote, two discrete DNA chromosomes, the molecules that contain all of an organism’s DNA, are mingled and reshuffled. The zygote grows, dividing into two cells, then four, then eight, each imprinted with this new DNA. This collection of ever-multiplying cells becomes an embryo, and then a fetus: a new human life.

Acquired traits can be inherited by the next generation.

Some traits, like eye color, are innate, meaning they are hardwired into our DNA and passed down from one generation to the next. Other traits, conditions, and behaviors – things like depression, or heart disease – can be acquired, meaning we develop them throughout our lifetimes.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Scientists have found that acquired traits, like innate traits, can also be passed down at a genetic level, from one generation to the next.

Genetic mutations shape our taste for dairy.

Did you know that about two-thirds of humans have some form of lactose intolerance? The explanation for this widespread intolerance – and for why the remaining two billion or so people on the planet can enjoy a bowl of ice cream with no nasty side effects – lies in our genetic makeup.

Here’s something weird about humans: we’re the only mammals that consume milk products after we’ve been weaned from our mothers’ breast milk. After they’re weaned, other mammals stop producing lactase, the enzyme that allows them to break down the sugars contained in milk. Without lactase, milk and milk products are difficult to digest.

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Worum geht es in She Has Her Mother’s Laugh?

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh (2018) probes the contemporary understanding of genetics and heredity, and provides an accessible history of the subject from the time of the Ancient Greeks onwards. Author Carl Zimmer also looks to the future, forecasting genetic developments on the horizon and unpacking what they might mean for humanity.

Wer She Has Her Mother’s Laugh lesen sollte

Science enthusiasts who want to round out their understanding of genetics and DNA
History buffs who enjoy reading about science and medicine
Amateur genealogists with an interest in getting to the roots of their family trees

Über den Autor

Carl Zimmer is a science journalist who reports on genetics, evolution, and parasites in “Matter,” his New York Times column. He is also the author of many popular science books, which have won him accolades such as the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, the Science in Society Journalism Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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