-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Science has a term for how popular you are among your network of friends and family. That is, how much you set the tone for their behavior and communication, how important you are to your group's cohesion, and how close you are to the center of your social network. It's called "betweeness centrality.
" Animals have this in their networks too. As it turns out, being the trendsetting popular kid could actually be genetic. And, according to a recent study of fruit flies in Nature Communications , it could be controlled by gene number CG14109 — a.
k.a. the "degrees of Kevin Bacon" gene (DOKB).
It is, of course, in reference to the parlor game " six degrees of Kevin Bacon ," in which the goal is to connect a random actor with the Mr. Bacon , the prolific actor who starred in "Tremors" and "Footloose," among other films. So what does any of that have to do with genetics? It's simply a metaphor that helps us understand the role genes play in building social networks (the literal kind, not to be confused with websites like Instagram.
) "Social networks are a mathematical representation of interactions among individuals which are prevalent across various animal species. Studies of human populations have shown the breadth of what can spread throughout a social network: obesity, smoking cessation, happiness, drug use and divorce," researchers from the University of Toronto wrote in their paper. Related Mongeese are some of the only animals that go .
