Short on PR—& Glad of It
Dolors & Sense
by Sanford Rose
KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—1/16/12—Not public relations. Genomics.
Nearly everyone talks about the “Woody Allen” gene, the source of a neurotransmitter, serotonin, which has a powerful impact on things such as mood and digestion, and thus makes quite a difference in everybody’s life.
But, in some people, the gene itself can prove literally short.
Every gene is composed of nucleotides, called bases. In genomic parlance, there are four bases—guanine, cytosine, thymine and adenine.
Guanine and cytosine team up to form a base pair that repeats itself—called, not surprisingly, a tandem repeat.
In a fair percentage of the population, that tandem repeat is truncated in what is dubbed the “promoter region” of the SERT gene. That’s the part that tells the other genetic part how much serotonin to release.
More than half of the population of Ashkenazi Jews, for example, is missing chunks of this promoter region.
Compare the string of GC repetitions in the promoter region of these Ashkenazi Jews’ SERT gene to that of a typical “goy,” and you uncover a shortfall that can sum to as much as 44 base pairs.
That’s close in length to the diameter of nearly 150 atoms of helium.
“We wuz robbed.”
“Or wuz we?”
Some relatively new research reveals that while the abbreviated version of the SERT gene may intensify unpleasant experiences, predisposing to neuroticism or “negative affect,” it may also potentiate and deepen positive environmental impacts.
In other words, the shortened allele is not just a vulnerability gene; rather it is a plasticity one.
So don’t bewail the genetic shortfall, which turns out to be an affliction not only of Jews but also of a considerable percentage of Asians.
It may indeed give its recipients lower lows.
But it may also confer higher highs.
And who wants to live life at the mean?
Sanford Rose
Sanford Rose, of New Jersey and Florida, served as Associate Editor of Fortune Magazine from 1968 till 1972; Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1972; Senior Editor of Fortune between 1972 and 1979; and Associate Editor, Financial Editor and Senior Columnist of American Banker newspaper between 1979 and 1991. From 1991 till 2001, Rose worked as a consultant in the banking industry and a professional ghost writer in the field of finance. He has also taught as an adjunct professor of banking at Columbia University and an adjunct instructor of economics at New York University. He states that he left gainful employment in 2001 to concentrate on gain-less investing. (A lifelong photo-phobe, Rose also claims that the head shot accompanying his Weekly Hubris columns is not his own, but belongs, instead, to a skilled woodworker residing in South Carolina.)