2023届高考英语二轮复习外刊阅读训练学案：新研究：影响身高的因素中，遗传只占40%

23年高考英语外刊阅读训练——阅读理解：新研究：影响身高的因素中，遗传只占40% 本文节选自：Telegraph（每日电讯报） 发布时间：2022.10.21 作者：Joe Pinkstone 原文标题：Height is only 40pc hereditary – the rest is nurture Parents worried that they may pass on their short stature to their children can rest easy, as a new study reveals nurture is more important than nature when it comes to a person's height. A landmark piece of research has found that more than 12,000 genes are responsible for determining how tall a person becomes, but this hereditary aspect is just 40 percent of the picture. The other 60 percent is caused by nurture-based traits like environment, upbringing and quality of life. Analysis of more than 5.4 million people discovered the culpable chunks of DNA involved in height determination and found them to live in parts of the genome that are responsible for skeletal growth. "Our study identified 12,111 genetic markers – or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) – associated with height in more than 5 million individuals from participating studies," study author Dr Eirini Marouli, associate professor in computational biology at Queen Mary University of London, told the Telegraph. "These explain 40 percent of height variation in individuals of European ancestries and between 10-20 percent in non-European populations.” But she added that genetics and its “complex manifestation” are just one part of the explanation."Additional aspects could potentially include: advancement in healthcare, nutrition, lifestyle and environmental factors,” Dr Marouli said. The study, published in Nature, also predicted how tall a person would become based on their genes alone and found it to be more accurate than the current method, which estimates a child's length by the height of their parents. This more accurate height prediction could be useful in healthcare. For example, if a child does not reach their predicted height, it could indicate an underlying condition that might be affecting growth, for example, related to hormonal deficien