CHILDREN with a genetic disorder which prompts them to be over-friendly with strangers are providing clues to the origins of sociability.
While those with (WS) find it easy to walk up to perfect strangers and make eye contact, they struggle to form lasting relationships. So of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and her colleagues wondered if people with WS might shed light on how sociability developed.
The team identified a girl with WS who, unusually, wasn’t overly friendly to strangers but was good at forming lasting relationships. They compared her genome with that of people who had typical WS symptoms and found that while she has the GTF2I gene, which most people have, the others lack it. This suggests that the gene may play a role in governing normal social behaviour (American Journal of Medical Genetics, ).
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The next step is to find out whether GTF2I, which regulates other genes, helps determine brain function or controls the production of hormones that modulate trust and empathy. However, the team cautions that this may not be the only gene responsible for social behaviour.
