I am Latin. not to the level of "I Love eating at taco bell while I listen a soccer match over the radio", but Latin enough to inherit the majority of the traits of my ancestors: Having a tacit permission to make Latin/Mexican racist jokes. This woke a lot of things in me; hunger mostly; but also an obsession to look for stereotypes jokes and other kind of insensitivity, just for the fun of making people feel uncomfortable. That way, I harvest the tactic advantage of belonging to a minority to hear the famous "yeah, that joke is kinda strong, but he can do it"... My nigga!
I'm not saying that only I can do that kind of jokes, basically because I love humor and (particularly) the ones that are satires of human groups, as doctors or pony adorers; but the thing is I am no doctor and sexually fantasizing with ponies is not my thing. So I work with what I have: being Latin. Top it with the fact that I love to make people feel something "wrong"... Yeah, I'm a troll.
Kill it, before it reproduces... Forget it, there's no chance he's getting laid.
How confuse and self referential this all became.
During the 19th century, Virchow proposed the Cell Theory, resuming it into "omni celula ex celula", or "every cell comes from another cell". I will take this into consideration to promote a theory that I like to call Orthodox Latin Bloodline Cornerstone: "Every Latin comes from a Latin". This may surprise you, but I come from a Latin mother. An extremely Latin Mother.
Fully equipped, airbags, A/C, lots of food, and a bunch of clothes to put me on in those winter days that weren't actually so cold. Extreme pampers. The questions: "Is she nice?", "Is she cute?" and "How does she cook?" were normal whenever I wanted to introduce her a new girlfriend of mine. That, and the following question: "When will you invite her over for dinner?".
The thing is, as you start asking around, you notice that this sort of mother is standard anywhere you look at. Even not being Latin. Sort of. The question ends up being about maternal care: Why that excessive mom loving? Besides crediting her for the most uncomfortable moments in your teenager times, when you were hanging out with friends. Does this caring have a positive outcome? Obviously, and since we're so "scientistific" and "biologistic" we want the evidence for such claim, I pulled from this thread, to know where it lead me to.
I tried to start a social experiment with friends, but their mothers didn't let them come. So I had to recur to bibliography (Internet) this lead into much less interesting results: Mice experiments. These distant cousins we've, there's several kinds of mothers, some pamper their children a lot others... not so much. Now, the obvious question "Is there a difference between the caring mothers' group of children and the other one?" Well, a bit: The ones that receive extra caring (weird word when referring to mice, since we don't know if they interpret "caring" as such) by their mothers are better suited to withstand stressful situations. On the other hand, the ones that receive the classic "I'm watching the soap-opera, bug off" stress for almost anything.
We could deduce: "Of course, the bad mother emits stress and the cool mother, being cool; as any hereditary trait", but the fun starts when you research what it's going on inside the cells with the elements that determine the "stress" response. Specifically, the glucocorticoid receptor, a Stress superstar. There HAS to be a difference on the things that determinate the reaction to stress, so to speak, the receptors of which you've already forgot the name (you didn't open the wiki link, I know) had to be different matching the responses to stress. That information has to be looked for in the DNA.
Here is the surprise: Both groups did not show any difference at a DNA level. The information for the development of the glucocortucoid receptors was the same. Here comes a funny "but"...
BUUUUUUT, what wasn't equal was the receptor itself: the protein, what is generated in base of the DNA information. There was some kind of factor that, even with the same "genetic coding", made ones have a different protein rendering; a group more than the other. The caring mother's children had a higher render of the glucocorticoid receptor than the soap-opera fan's children, this makes their reaction to stress more "cool".
We need to understand the difference, why two critters with the same information render differently, considering the amount of protein and the behavior. You know behavior is not magically forged, it is highly influenced by this two factors; the factory setting and the environment; both, somehow modify the information.
The DNA, where (almost) all the genes we have are at, including the one that matters, has an amazing structure, it is a gigantic molecule but compressed, at some places more than others, it's a RAR file. If you lengthened it, it would measure 2 meters (some say more, some say less, whatever; you get the point), the thing is, it is inside a 10μm (micrometre) nucleus, this is like putting something that measures 44.000 meters inside a soccer ball. It turn out it may suffer some epigenetic changes, they are called like this because they don't modify the identity of a gene, but can alter its state. I don't know you, but to me all this molecular biology things drive me insane; even having EXACTLY the same information at the DNA sequence, results may differ.
DNA is more than just a mere chain of instructions, it has a high grade of packing, being a thin-long molecule, this has an impact in the process of accessing that information. The same DNA, the same (more or less) available info. Same chain, more or less packed. This "packing" is thanks to modifications that are NOT part of the sequence itself, a part of it is not changed (those things you may have seen sometime ago that were A, T, G or C) but yes other parts of the molecule, this consists in adding small chemical markings into the structure. In one side, the methylations (-CH3), that "close" the structure more, on the other acetylations, that open it a bit (this is an strong oversimplification, to the point that, strictly speaking, methylations do almost everything, but lets take this info as a generic way of talking about access and not-access to the DNA info).
Well, here is when something unexpected happened at scene: theories fit perfectly." Bad" mothers have a methylated receptor gene, while "good" mothers don't. And his can be even more interesting.
I imagine my mother, as many other mothers, considering to change me for another kid whenever I stormed her with questions she had no idea how to reply to... This was done... With mice and cages. They exchanged children among the 2 groups of mothers. The result was a party. The sons of the "bad" mothers but raised by "good" mothers had the same response to stress than the "good" mothers' children. Better yet, the methylations one would expect to be inherited, were not present. This is, there was a genetic modification triggered by the environment.
Lamarck vs Darwin. Lamarck was one of the first men to step into the muddy evolution waters. He thought that the traits that were inherited were the ones that were acquired during life (kinda odd, if we are extremist with the idea... I lost an arm, my child will be born with no arm). At the other corner Darwin, with the idea: one is born with certain characteristics and the environment chooses among them, period. You're born what you are, you inherit what you're, you die what you are, we still love you (sort of). Obviously Darwin is our Iron Man and was almost right at almost everything, but then Lamarck is Iron Patriot, the environment CAN change us even leave a mark at the DNA (even if it is not a hereditary mark; refer to the arm example above).
Genes are regulated by many things, among them transcription factors, proteins that adhere to specific places in the DNA and incentive the gene's expression (render). Here, methylations and acetylations kick in along with the idea that DNA is not a simple, clean line of information but a 3D molecule that unfolds in space as a string, entangled in some places. The methylation, makes DNA to fold itself in space, blocking the transcription factors to interact with it where they'd normally could. Like when you want to talk to a chick, and she's surrounded by 12 of her friends, it is impossible to get next to her without "breaking" the chain, or pushing the friends away.
The "bad" mothers' at their first week of life had no love from their mothers, and that methylation marking, thus the transcription factres were not able to interact with the part of DNA that corresponded. Glucocorticoid fail. The other mice, not only had no methylation, but had acetylation. The DNA structure was wide open and readable; so the transcription factors were able to do their charm. So, for stress control, you RELY more in your mother than in anything else in life. No wonder I laugh to life!!!
Gotta go, I've a wall to jump.