psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

, a trait (or

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...

) is called emergenic if it is the result of a specific combination of several interacting

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

s (rather than of a simple sum of several independent genes). Emergenic traits will not run in families, but

identical twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

s will share them. Traits such as "leadership", "genius" or certain mental illnesses may be emergenic. Although one may expect epigenetics to play a significant role in the phenotypic manifestation of twins reared apart, the concordance displayed between them can be attributed to emergenesis.

References

{{Reflist Genetics Emergence