The study, published in Psychological Science with co-authors Bonamy Oliver and Robert Plomin, used data from more than 6,000 children who are part of the Twins' Early Development Study (TEDS). TEDS is a longitudinal study of twins born in England and Wales between 1994 and 1996. Genetic data from the twins have been collected since their first year of life and is ongoing.
The study found that two factors, environment and genes, account for whether a child will an avid reader and listener to books even as a preschooler. Dale said parents often work hard to bring literacy to their children and are disappointed or feel like they have failed if the children have a lesser interest in reading than the parents had hoped.
"Genes tend to have a very broad effect and it is often more than one gene that determines the interests a child will learn toward," Dale said. "Environment tends to act as the specialist. Reading to children can increase their interest in books but because of the genetic factor, they may never take to the love of books that a parent may have no matter how hard a parent tries to teach it."
Children have their own tastes and preferences, according to Dale. He said it is important to respect their individuality when trying to increase their fondness for reading. It is important to be willing to adapt and accommodate a child's schedule and interests.
"Some children will show more interest in something at certain times of the day," Dale said. "Don't assume that your child shares your tastes. Be willing to pay attention to the cues from the child."
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Researchers used a computer program to determine how RNA copied from the MgtA gene might be folding up. The program predicted RNA copied from the gene could have two significantly different configurations. Because of the significant differences between these configurations, Groisman, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, became interested in a region at the beginning of the RNA strand that contains no protein-building instructions. He theorized that it might be a riboswitch that responded to high magnesium levels by twisting the RNA into a configuration where its protein-building instructions somehow could not be used or were invalidated.
"One of our tests to see if this was something more than a computer fantasy was to take this segment that contains no protein-building instructions off the MgtA gene and paste it into another genetic configuration," Groisman says. "We wanted to see if it conferred sensitivity to magnesium levels, which it did."
In addition, Groisman's group showed that one RNA configuration was common in low magnesium levels while another was common in high magnesium levels.
They also searched the genomes of other bacteria with MgtA genes to see if their DNA included a sequence similar to the riboswitch in Salmonella. In six other bacteria, a similar sequence precedes the MgtA gene and can twist RNA copied from it into different configurations.
"Normally you would expect to find that a DNA sequence that is conserved among different species is encoding part of a protein," Groisman says. "But here we're talking about a part of a message that does not encode a protein. So why would it be conserved? There must be some important role that the sequence is fulfilling that is leading to its conservation, such as giving the cell expanded ability to sense and respond to magnesium levels."
Follow-up inquiries are already underway to locate the riboswitch's "brain"--the section of the RNA strand that responds to magnesium; and to learn how the high-magnesium configuration of the RNA disrupts final production of the protein.
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