When I was in college, I learned a simple formula: Genes + Environment = Who We Are. In class after class, my professors told me that when it came to the shaping of human life, the effects of genes and environment didn’t mix. Nurture was in one box, and Nature was in another. This was conventional wisdom for a long time—until suddenly it wasn’t. To many a scientist’s surprise, new research suggests that this equation couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because you have a certain type of gene doesn’t mean it actually affects you. What determines who we are is whether those genes are turned
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