• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Saturday, October 4, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Biology

The complex biology behind your love (or hatred) of coffee

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
March 6, 2020
in Biology
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

A Berkeley Lab scientist used statistics to tease out how genetics and environment interact to shape coffee consumption

IMAGE

Credit: Julius Schorzman/Wikimedia Commons


Why do some people feel like they need three cups of coffee just to get through the day when others are happy with only one? Why do some people abstain entirely? New research suggests that our intake of coffee – the most popular beverage in America, above bottled water, sodas, tea, and beer – is affected by a positive feedback loop between genetics and the environment.

This phenomenon, known as “quantile-specific heritability,” is also associated with cholesterol levels and body weight, and is thought to play a role in other human physiological and behavioral traits that defy simple explanation.

“It appears that environmental factors sort of set the groundwork in which your genes start to have an effect,” said Paul Williams, a statistician at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “So, if your surroundings predispose you to drinking more coffee – like your coworkers or spouse drink a lot, or you live in an area with a lot of cafes – then the genes you possess that predispose you to like coffee will have a bigger impact. These two effects are synergistic.”

Williams’ findings, published in the journal Behavioral Genetics, came from an analysis of 4,788 child-parent pairs and 2,380 siblings from the Framingham Study – a famous, ongoing study launched by the National Institutes of Health in 1948 to investigate how lifestyle and genetics affect rates of cardiovascular disease. Participants, who are all related to an original group from Framingham, Massachusetts, submit detailed information about diet, exercise, medication use, and medical history every three to five years. Data from the study have been used in thousands of investigations into many facets of human health.

Williams used a statistical approach called quantile regression to calculate what proportion of participants’ coffee drinking could be explained by genetics – as the study follows families – and what must be influenced by external factors. Past research shows that the most significant environmental factors influencing coffee drinking are culture and geographic location, age, sex, and whether or not one smokes tobacco; with older male smokers of European ancestry drinking the most, overall.

The analysis indicated that between 36% and 58% of coffee intake is genetically determined (although the exact causative genes remain unknown). However, confirming Williams’ hypothesis that coffee drinking is a quantile-specific trait, the correlation between a parent’s coffee drinking and an offspring’s coffee drinking got increasingly stronger for each offspring’s coffee consumption quantile, or bracket (for example, zero cups per day, one to two cups, two to four cups, and five or more cups).

“When we started to decode the human genome, we thought we’d be able to read the DNA and understand how genes translate into behavior, medical conditions, and such. But that’s not the way it’s worked out,” said Williams, who is a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division. “For many traits, like coffee drinking, we know that they have a strong genetic component – we’ve known coffee drinking runs in families since the 1960s. But, when we actually start looking at the DNA itself, we usually find a very small percentage of the traits’ variation can be attributed to genes alone.”

The traditional assumption in genetic research has been that one’s surroundings and lifestyle alter gene expression levels in consistent and measurable ways, ultimately creating the outward manifestation – called a phenotype – of a trait. Williams’ statistics work shows that the situation is more complex, which helps explain the diversity of traits we see in the real world.

MBIB Division Director Paul Adams commented, “Paul’s statistical studies complement the genomics research that Berkeley Lab bioscientists conduct to learn more about the relationship between genes and the environment.”

Next, Williams plans to assess whether quantile-specific heritability plays a role in alcohol consumption and pulmonary function. “This is a whole new area of exploration that is just now opening up,” he said. “I think it will change, in a very fundamental way, how we think genes influence a person’s traits.”

###

This research was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a gift from HOKA ONE ONE. The Framingham Study Data were made available through the Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Media Contact
Aliyah Kovner
[email protected]
707-849-0311

Original Source

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/03/05/biology-love-of-coffee/

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10519-019-09989-0

Tags: BehaviorBiologyGeneticsSocial/Behavioral Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

“Rice Cultivar Transcriptome Reveals Heat Stress Response Genes”

“Rice Cultivar Transcriptome Reveals Heat Stress Response Genes”

October 4, 2025
blank

Revolutionary Graph Network Enhances Protein Interaction Prediction

October 4, 2025

DOG Gene Family in Wheat Drives Seed Dormancy

October 4, 2025

Discovery of MrSTP20: Sugar Transporter in Salt Stress

October 4, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    93 shares
    Share 37 Tweet 23
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    90 shares
    Share 36 Tweet 23
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • New Insights Suggest ALS May Be an Autoimmune Disease

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

HIRAID Framework Enhances Nurse and Patient Outcomes

tRF-34-86J8WPMN1E8Y2Q Fuels Gastric Cancer Progression

Discovering Wuwei Xiaodu Decoction’s Anti-Inflammatory Mechanisms

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Success! An email was just sent to confirm your subscription. Please find the email now and click 'Confirm' to start subscribing.

Join 62 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.