Timid genes
Fear may be in built in your genes. A team led by Jeanne Wehner at the University of Colorado, USA, has discovered a range of DNA that are responsible for putting terror into the hearts of mice. The researchers gave mild electric shocks to rodents soon after exposing them to loud sound. After that, whenever the mice were kept in the same chamber or heard the noise, they got scared. The examination of DNA revealed that a region of the mice's chromosome I was responsible for an extreme fear response. The researchers say that the region probably contains genes that produce proteins in the fear pathway. As the region contains hundreds of genes, it may take several years to find the cowardly genes (New Scientist, Vol 156, No 2106).