Study Shows Parental Genes Shape Environment in Ways That Rival Direct Inheritance

Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health developed a novel statistical framework to disentangle three distinct genetic pathways shaping children's traits: the child's own DNA, indirect effects from parental genes acting through the home environment (genetic nurture), and parent-of-origin effects where the same gene behaves differently depending on which parent transmitted it. Analyzing data from over 30,000 mother-father-child trios drawn from Norwegian and Estonian biobanks, the team found that while a child's own DNA remains the single largest genetic contributor to height, BMI, and age-10 school test scores, the combined indirect and parent-of-origin effects are comparably substantial. Notably, the same genomic loci appear to underlie both direct and indirect effects, suggesting the same DNA regions shape traits both through inheritance and through the environments parents create. The researchers also found evidence that genetic imprinting may be more widespread in humans than previously appreciated, though its molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. A separate preprint study using the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides as a model organism provides a complementary mechanistic picture: parental care suppresses heritable genetic variation in offspring body size, and removing care releases that variation, apparently by disrupting the protein chaperone Hsp83 and altering chromatin accessibility. Collectively, the two studies reinforce that the relationship between genes and traits is shaped by a layered system of parental influence operating at environmental, epigenetic, and molecular levels, with implications for personalized medicine, public health policy, and evolutionary biology.