A STUDY published online February 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides researchers with a novel technique for resolving the nurture vs nature debate, also known as whether or not people are shaped by their environment or inherited genes.

A team led by developmental psychologist Frances Rice, now a psychologist at University College London, from Cardiff University studied 779 children born in the United Kingdom and conceived through in vitro fertilization. Rice and her colleagues wanted to know whether or not low birth weight and antisocial behavior?two characteristics associated with babies born to mothers who smoke during their pregnancies?are influenced by genes or their prenatal environments.

A quarter of the children in the study were unrelated to the women who carried them to term, allowing the researchers to look at the environmental effect only; another 6 percent of the mothers said they smoked while pregnant.

Rice and her colleagues found that the babies born to mothers who smoked, regardless of whether or not there was a genetic relationship, were more likely to be born underweight. The finding matched results in previous studies.

In contrast, the researchers found that children genetically related to the smoking mothers who bore them were more likely to be described as having antisocial behavior. So while low birth weight appears to be influenced by environment, antisocial behavior seems to be influenced by the genes.

Not being studied yet

The nature vs nurture question isn?t being studied yet in commercially cloned pets, but it may become a topic of interest as more people choose to use this method to keep their beloved animals around.

In the past year, South Korean companies cloned two dogs so their owners could have their animal companions again. The process was made possible by Snuppy, the Afghan hound introduced to the world in 2005 by a team of Seoul National University researchers as the first successfully cloned dog.

At the time, Snuppy was another success story for the South Korean team of researchers led by stem cell scientist Woo Suk Hwang, who?d claimed to have cloned the first human embryo. Most of Hwang?s work was later discredited; only the research that led to Snuppy?s creation was authenticated by a university panel.

Last August, a South Korean biotech company produced five cloned pit bull puppies for an American woman who couldn?t live without the dog who?d once saved her life. And a few weeks ago, a yellow Labrador puppy named Lancelot Encore was taken home by his proud owners in the state of Florida. The puppy was commercially cloned from the cells of the Floridian couple?s previous yellow lab, Lancelot, who?d died six months earlier.

The Labrador?s owners told reporters they chose to clone their dog because of the companionship they?d shared with him for years. They said they were delighted to find the puppy fitting into the household as if he?d been there all along.

Such comments raise the question of whether or not the clone can be just like the pet that died if it has the same genes but was raised in a different environment.

No shared histories

Lancelot Encore and the pit bull puppies have the same genes and same owners as their predecessors, but they weren?t carried by the same mothers so the prenatal environments are different. And despite having the same owners, the clones don?t have the shared histories and experiences that led to the original bonds between dog and human.

Such arguments might suggest that there?s no need to have the nurture vs nature debate at all as the answer seems clear. The owners of the dogs however, would likely disagree. Any studies on this subject would likely result in some interesting findings.

E-mail the author at massie@ massie.com.