“Genes have plenty to do with behavior. Even more appropriately, all behavioral traits are affected to some degree by genetic variability. They have to be, given that they specify the structure of all the proteins pertinent to every neurotransmitter, hormone, receptor, etc. that there is. And they have plenty to do with individual differences in behavior, given the large percentage of genes that are polymorphic, coming in different flavors. But their effects are supremely context dependent. Ask not what a gene does. Ask what it does in a particular environment and when expressed in a particular network of other genes.”
—Robert Sapolsky.
