Identical twin sisters, sharing the same DNA (confirmed by St Thomas Twin Research Unit), but I get the bunions! We both wore the same silly shoes when teenagers, so how come one of us ends up in hospital to get two ugly joints removed? Also, one has an underactive thyroid, raynods disease, gall stones and suffered a heart attack (the healthy twin who doesn't smoke, drink or consume fat), and the other doesn't. On balance, I think I prefer to have gotten away with just bunions!
How come we can be so different physically even though we came from one fertilised egg? It's not even as if we have remarkably different life styles or live in opposite hemispheres. Obviously, identical twins are not clones - but how come there are now such glaring physical differences?
2007-01-12 22:36:48 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
Loren H - you're too late, pal. Went under the surgeon's knife two months ago and I'm just about ready to rediscover my golf swing and get up and down a few fells. You got some sort of foot fettish, or what?
Curtis P - corns are NOT bunions. It's the joint at the base of the big toe which becomes deformed and pushes the other toes out of alignment. A more pleasing term for the condition is Hallux Valgus.
2007-01-12 23:27:17 · update #1
good example of environmental influence on heredity ( the genes are a blueprint not a lifelong instruction manual - proteins and things as minor as mood can have an impact )
also you should consider the element of random chance you started from one combination of cells but all of the other cells were produced under different conditions ( it would be likely that if you made a duplicate of yourself right now things would change over time as cells died and were replaced - if not there would be no change at all we would all be duplicates of the first living organism ! )
2007-01-12 22:40:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Since the difference is not genetic, I would presume there is some other influence at work. Perhaps you have engaged in some sort of physical activity that your twin did/does not; perhaps you took a medication or ate a food that your twin does not. While you may have started out the same genetically speaking, you are not the same person, and have had many different experiences in your lives. It may simply be that you both inherited the TENDENCY, but something occurred in your life which triggered the actual occurrence in you, but not in your twin.
2007-01-12 22:44:54 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
I can't give you a definitive answer on this one, but it suggests to me that genes are far more sensitive to environment than some people like to believe.
From the sound of it, you and your twin have quite different personalities (otherwise you'd show more similar behaviour patterns where drinking & smoking & eating fat &c are concerned). I think personality influences our medical progress far more than conventional medicine takes into account. That is, your personality is an important part of your environment.
I'm not surprised the twin with the "healthy" lifestyle has got sick, one seems to hear of people with allegedly "healthy" lifestyles getting sick all too often.
2007-01-12 22:50:12 · answer #3 · answered by Spell Check! 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Hey, if you want I'll gnaw them off for you! Not really but I do have a hacksaw!!
2007-01-12 22:39:28 · answer #4 · answered by Loren H 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I guess God wanted you to have bunions.
2007-01-12 22:40:02 · answer #5 · answered by xenypoo 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Please call them corns... buniouns is a little too vulgar for me.
2007-01-12 22:41:05 · answer #6 · answered by I have a really long nickname!!! 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
'Genetics'!
2007-01-12 22:40:09 · answer #7 · answered by olamipopoola 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋