But while twin studies are useful for establishing the extent to which a characteristic isheritable, they do not finger the particular genes at work. One of the researchers, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, of University College, London, and the London School of Economics, hastried to do just that, by picking a popular suspectthe gene that encodes the serotonin-transporter protein, a molecule that shuffles a brain messenger called serotonin through cellmembranesand examining how variants of that gene affect levels of happiness.
虽然关于双胞胎的研究有助于确定一个性格特征在多大程度上能被遗传,但是这项研究并未指出到底是哪个基因起到了遗传作用。伦敦大学学院及伦敦经济学院的一位研究人员简-以内马利德内弗已选出一个被认为最有可能起作用的基因,即编码血清素转运体蛋白质的基因,并尝试检验这个基因的各种变异对幸福感的影响有多大。
Serotonin is involved in mood regulation. Serotonin transporters are crucial to this job. Theserotonin-transporter gene comes in two functional variantslong and short. The long oneproduces more transporter-protein molecules than the short one. People have two versions of each gene, one from each parent. So some have two short alleles, somehave two long ones, and the rest have one of each.
血清素与情绪调节有关,而血清素转运体在其中的作用至关重要。从功能角度上区分,血清素转运提基因有两种变体:长型和短型,长型能比短型制造出更多的转运体蛋白质分子。人类拥有分别来自父亲与母亲的两个血清素转运体基因,每个基因有两种版本。所以,有些人拥有两个短型等位基因,有些人拥有两个长型等位基因,剩下的则长型短型各一个。
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