LPL Deficiency: Do genes and the environment determine the functioning of organisms

[Deleted]

Good day,
I have an assignment for my systems biology class, in which we have to debate the following topic:
LPL deficiency leads to high blood triglycerides (fats) and repeated pancreatitis (pancreas infection). LPL deficiency is caused by extremely low or absent activity of LPL, encoded by the gene LPL. This disease shows that only genes and the environment determine the functioning of organisms.

I'm having a very hard time coming up with arguments for this subject, either for it or against. The problem especially comes from the environment part; what can you define as the environment? And the topic is very specific in that it says this disease, making me think that this disease should be utilized in the arguments.
What I can find so far is that with a regulated fat intake + some medicinal substances, the disease can be controlled rather well, which speaks in favor of the gene + environment part, I guess. But beyond this, I find it hard to come up with arguments related to the disease itself.
On the other hand, proteins determine the functioning of genes, which in turn code for proteins, so that's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, certainly not a genes only situation. You then also have the fact that there are no genes which code for interactions.

All in all it sounds a lot like a gene determinism debate, for which I can think of many arguments. Many of which involve the environment in an active way, thus useless in this case..

Any input on this would be great, and of course it is an interesting subject on its own; you don't have to stick to the specific disease, gene determinism has enough debate of its own.

[Foosha]

Genes are...your DNA, that's it, plain and simple. Environment is everything else. And for the protein part, your DNA determines the amino acid sequence (protein). DNA->RNA->Protein

[Deleted]

This is already a field of study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

Hopefully this'll help you get started.

[Grizzly Willy]

Genes are determined by the environment of your ancestors, so yes. Though I would argue that culture is a larger influence than genetics and physical environment. Hell, I wrote a paper on it!

[Deleted]

This will also prove useful for your paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenata...27s_Hypothesis

"Barker's Hypothesis" is also known as “Fetal Programming Hypothesis”. The word “programming” illustrates the idea that during critical periods in early fetal development, there are persisting changes in the body structure and function that are caused by environmental stimuli.[6] This relates to the concept of developmental plasticity where our genes can express different ranges of physiological or morphological states in response to the environmental conditions during fetal development".

[Deleted]

Thanks a lot guys! Sorry for the late response, but this has been a great help, especially the two links. I should have known about epigenetics, that makes my life a lot easier. I should have arranged the post in a more open way though, so people could actually discuss it instead of 'doing my homework for me', sorry.

[Catta]

The expression of genes can be altered by environment through epigenetics...

I imagine that an argument can be that the environment can lock down the gene causing the disease...

Now this is rather far away from me at the moment though so i could easily be wrong...