Slashdot Mirror
Humanity Gene Found?
Banana_Republican writes "Nature is reporting that that multiple copies of a mystery gene may be what makes us human. It appears that humans have multiple carbon copies of a recently discovered gene that other primates lack. In particular, one sequence not so romantically or emotionally termed 'DUF1220' was mentioned . Humans carry 212 copies of DUF1220, whereas chimps have 37 copies, and monkeys have only 30 copies. Apparently the current thinking is that this gene is responsible for coding important areas of brain function."
and commence with Planet of the Apes.
because I'd rather not be human because of something called DUF (and no... the 1220 on the end doesn't help).
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion...
"So what's the difference between a monkey fetus and a human fetus? Huh? Huh?!!!" argument.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Fantastic. Unfortunately, that seems to come from the same school of thought as my suggestion here: this gene is responsible for male pattern balding and fully erect bipedal motion.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"And they know that the gene makes a protein that is found in the human brain. That suggests that it may help to give the human brain its unique ability to think and reason, they say. "
Interesting conclusion there...
What are those?
Don't they copy A T C G too?
The latest Slashdot meme.
Cue the Simpsons Duff Beer jokes!
Homer simpson anyone?
Homer must be saying, "Told you so. We are not human without DUF".
How many copies of this gene did the fire-by-email Radio Shack managers have?
--
$tar -xvf
DUF1220, it makes you feel human... Drink up!
Duf, Duf that wonderful stuff...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"My honor student has more copies of the DUF 1220 gene than yours!" and "Got DUF1220?"
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
"Good news everyone"
cat
Boy, is my face red. All this time I've been using tails and fur to distinguish between humans and other primates, when DUF1220 was the key.
DUFF? All I can say is: WOO-HOO!
Dark Reflection
Although there are some critical genes for expression of human characters, one of the characteristics of rapid evolution seems to be the inactivation of genes. As you progress along the line to humans there appear to be fewer and fewer genes being expressed. This seems to be the result of mutation's default action which is to damage gene function which in general means to deactivate it. Its a lot easier to deactivate a gene than it is to create a gene with positive action. So you can expect that if there are ways to create positive characters at the phenotype level by deactivating genes that would be main way those characters emerge during the early stage of evolution. It is probably also be that some older genes need to be silenced to so that newer genes that actually do function can express less competition.
Seastead this.
Can't get enough of the wonderful DUF.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Wow. Doubly offtopic. Once for the lame joke, and once because you're pimping your website.
At least put the link in a signature. The fact that you've already set it as your homepage should be enough.
Please.
...of that wonderful DUF
"Beer, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems"
Ok, this was going to be my new name in Slashdot but some bastard already registered it!
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Really, it makes sense. Patrick Duffy is what makes us truly human, after all.
Ryan Fenton
...of that wonderful DUF!
crazy dynamite monkey
... one sequence not so romantically or emotionally termed 'DUF1220' was mentioned.
For a moment, I thought it was "DNF1220". The possibility that a copy of Duke Nukem Forever had time traveled back to 1220 B.C. to infect the human gene pool is too horrible to imagine.
(As a tester on "Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes" for PSX, where Dukie time travels to future and does a Bill Clinton at the White House, this scenario isn't too far fetch to imagine. Blame my genes!)
Not that it's going to stop all the Simpsons jokes, but DUF just stands for Domain of Unknown Function. It's not a name so much as a placeholder. There are lots of DUFs.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
In your defense, they're quite hard to tell apart once you've had a few Duffs. What look like slightly unshaven legs and sloping posture the night before reveal themselves fully in the morning after.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Explains a few things.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If this has any truth, we'll probably soon hear that the protein made by this gene is found primarily, or in high quantities, in areas important to language production like Broca's area or Wernicke's area.
In other news the more midi-chlorians in your blood, the greater the person's Force ability
TFA says that there is a gene that humans have more copies of than primates and that this gene makes a protein in the brain. They don't know what the protein does in the brain indeed they have no idea what having multiple copies of the gene does. Yet they reach the conclusion that this gene may be responsible for giving us our humanity.
All they seem to have is a weak correlation between the number of this gene and intelligence (which is arguable - I know some really dumb people) and as we've all learnt many times "Correlation does not imply causation."
IANAGS but I'd wait until there was some more evidence on offer.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
...i am loaded with DUF
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
RIAA and MPAA members found lacking new gene...
rooooar
I do not understand. Even though the issue is with the multiple copies of the same gene, can't the researchers just knock off this single gene in mice and get the basic idea of what this protien is all about?
After that they can go ahead and insert multiple copies to gather more info. But just because the protien is in the brain (and there are multiple copies in primates) doesnt alone to suggest that it is the one behind reasoning abilities of humans.
One interesting fact is that it looks as if higher up the intelligence scale of primates, the higher the count seems to be.
But is that enough? Cant it be something that can be related to any of the other defining characteristics of humans ?
Say, opposible thumbs or bipedal motion or something? These also do have relation to brain, doesnt it?
Anyways, it looks like there is much more to this than the article suggests, so I should keep mum, methinks
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
But nobody would make the mistake of saying that this gene is the gene for 'chimpness'. It's just an accident of history that SIV arose before HIV.
I learned all of this from an excellent podcast whose name I dare not write for fear of offence...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
There are constant articles of this nature in the media, especially those concerning dinosaurs, primitive man, origins of the universe, etc.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
from paragraph 2 of TFA:
"Scientists don't know what the gene does."
No, they know what the gene does, it codes for a protein. They don't know what this protein does.
Then they say that the protein is expressed all over, including the brain, so that means it may be involved in brain function.
For all they know it could be a structural protein, which is a better bet if it's expressed outside the brain.
Somehow I doubt that a single gene is responsible for humanity.
I try to be positive when I post, but what kind of morons do they have writing this stuff? And this is Nature magazine? How about some info on what sort of protein it is: Kinase? Carboxylase? Protease? How about some info on the expression levels instead of how many copies there are? There could be 1000 copies in our genome, but if the expression is low, it doesn't matter.
Guess I'll have to RTFP, where P=Paper.
Since when does wild-ass guessing = science that is newsworthy?
How about they do a *lot* more research and then get back to us when they have more than "we found that humans have more copies of a 'mystery gene' that codes for proteins in the brain than a monkey"?!
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
...now somebody's going to shove this thing a couple hundred times into a monkey, and it'll be fucking Planet of the Apes for real.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Killing and eating a fish/monkey/rat is murder. /sarcasm off
Please mod parent +1 funny.
If DUF makes us smart, FUD must make us stupid.
God spoke to me.
...that my first anticipatory reaction to this headline was wondering what the republican counter response would be.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
DUF fills your Q zone with pure DUF goodness :)
The more I read about DNA the more I have come to think of it in terms of software. Specific genes may be individual instructions and or subroutines. The order in which genes occur probably has as much to do with the whole thing as the pieces of the DNA itself.
That's what worries me about genetic experimentation, of course it is nessisary, but I think we don't quite fully understand it yet and our experiments are like a nube cracker changing code with a debugger. Hopefully, what they experiment on just dies, because, you know, you never really know!
I wonder if DUF1220 is actually a gene that makes humans crave beer?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Scientists don't know what the gene does. But they do know that humans have more copies of it than chimpanzees, monkeys, rats and mice. And they know that the gene makes a protein that is found in the human brain
Guess you know what the gene does then.
You may not know what the protein does, but you know what the gene does.
Besides, just because humans have more of something doesn't mean it's what automatically causes the brain's "unique ability to think and reason." For all you know, the protein may have different effects between species. This whole article seems like attention-whoring to me.
Come back when you know something useful, k?
Unfortunately, future candidates for political office will be tested for this gene. Those bearing it will be disqualified from running.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Shouldn't that be multiple NUCLEIC ACID copies?!?!?! OMG LORFL
The important thing is, now that we've found the gene, will be able able to find a cure?
Obligatory Simpsons Joke:
"DUFMan, human! OH yeah!"
Sugapablo
Three-toed sloths are an obvious first candidate to become earth's second sapient species.
They can be put to work installing Wi-Fi nodes and spy cameras on telephone poles.
And if they decide to rebel against their human creators, it will be really easy to outrun them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fc-sUtX0Eg
Warning. Consume all beverages before watching.
chimps are only 17.5% human?
Moe : [reading from the bar's copy of Nature] "...it says here, that humans wouldn't be human without something called 'DUF'. Huh!"
Barney [raising mug] : "I'll vouch for that! {BBBbBbbbbllllaaaabbllbbllbbllbb!!}"
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
which was puzzling at first, because it's literally flipped around from the chimp gene, and actually is similar to a dog segment. Turns out a lot of what we thought were different gene segments folded wrong and literally reassembled upside down (backwards).
However, just remember that just because we may have found a segment doesn't mean we understand how it works. Sometimes, it's not just the genes it encodes, it's how it impacts other genes on other chromosomes, and how it misfolds or affects transcription errors.
Every day we learn more and more, and understand less and less. But it's fascinating work, and is leading to greater understanding of what makes us tick - even though we are all different and the variation among us homo sapiens is greater than the difference between homo sapiens and a chimp. Sometimes, you may find you may have more genetically in common with someone from Borneo when you're from Germany than you do with another person from Germany.
[note - if I'm wrong about the flip, my apologies, it's been a summer with few seminars - reading the papers is harder in some ways]
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
CAN'T YOU ALL SEE??? This is the work of his noodly appendage! We should all marvel at this(and his) wonderous and miraculus feat(and feet)! Anyone saying otherise is just speaking blasphemy!!!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I sent a link of the Slashdot article to my brother, with the requisite Duff joke. He responded by saying that DUF1220 is more common in rabbits, elephants, and some other stuff than it is in humans.
3 1393&hgt.out2=+3x+&position=chr1%3A142191957-14219 9015
I for one welcome our new armadillo overlords.
http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?hgsid=770
Good to know that I'm almost as smart as a monkey.
>>Apparently the current thinking is that this gene is responsible for coding important areas of brain function.
>Well, why don't they make some knockout mutants and then look at the brain function? It seems like the logical next step.
Three words: Jerry Springer Show
Wow. Doubly offtopic. Once for the lame joke, and once because you're pimping your website.
And it was a really lame joke he made.
Hey, if anyone's on Facebook, feel free to join my Seminar Junkies group - I'm the guy in the cape.
Remember, even if we have 220 segments and chimps have 37 segments, it doesn't mean we know what they do, or how they impact other gene-encoding regions - it's only recently we started figuring out most of the segments we thought were "noise" are actually responsible for encoding other genes, due to transcription and folding "errors" - yet which make us what we are.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Poor humans are still trying to confirm that they are the pinnacle of the universe.
From believing they are in the center of god's creation, they have slowly, as their knowledge increased lost again and again. First they discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe, then that the sun was just a mediocre star in an average neighborhood in an average galaxy. Darwin taught them that they are just another leaf on the tree of life.
Now they are still clinging to the hope that their brains are so superior. The genome projects for some species may be the final nail in the coffin, for again they are likely to face disappointment.
Just get it: you are monkeys that can vocalize a little.
"Fix it"
So if I grow a banana with 213 copies of this gene grafted in somewhere, then the banana will be superhuman?
In your defense, they're quite hard to tell apart once you've had a few Duffs. What look like slightly unshaven legs and sloping posture the night before reveal themselves fully in the morning after.
Have you tested that theory experimentally and repeatedly? And who did the peer review on the research?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Perhaps most revealingly, transgenic mice with this gene incorporated into their genomes have been found to habitually scratch patterns on the floors of their cages that strongly resemble engineering blueprints for a flamethrower."
Because, if God was such a bad programmer he had to encode it 220 times, instead of making an efficient coding paradigm that used only say three segments for backup ... well ...
Or does it mean chimps run Linux and only need 22 code segments to do what Humans (Windows) needs 220 code segments to get done?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ah... that explains it. So they assign a name based on it's function once (and if) they figure out what it does?
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion...
Now don't you wish you had used a better subject line?
The UN has asked the Iranian government for full access to search for George Bush's 28 missing copies of the DUF1220 Gene. ::ducks::
Sensation... Sensation... Sensation... I am so freggin glad scientist, because of the obscure nature of the unknown, are more like lawyers in their verbiage
"Such a protein could have helped to define what makes our brains human, the scientists say, although they caution that that has not yet been proven, and probably won't be until they know what it does."
Truth be told these DUFs could be something or they can be nothing. Hell, it could even equal how tall we should average on some universal measureing scale. What!?... it's in the brain? Maybe it's the amount of unused space since we appear to get dumber and dumber with every passing generation. I'd be intrested in finding out if these DUFs are in fish or reptiles or birds. It could just simply be the expected amount of memory allocation... WEEEEEEE! A reference to man vs machine... it's our RAM +/- a few random fab defects. I love it when a scientist says "It could..." and the media says "There's a link!!"
~~ Correct my speeling and I'll kick your butt ~~
The natural follow-up study: Who has more DUF1220 on average, men or women?
He has only ten copies.
The caption on the picture in the article says, "What makes humans, primates, unique?"
Who says they're unique?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Can it be spliced into Dick Cheney with a retro-virus?
The assumption that DNA exists solely to produce proteins is wrong. Current research suggests that DNA (via mRNA) has a direct role in memory formation in the brain. In fact, many genes have been identified whose role it is not to produce proteins, but serve as a mechanism in thought and memory formation and reinforcement. Considering that there may be many similar or identical functions in the brain with regards to thought and memory, intelligent organisms having multiple copies of these memory controlling genes is unsurprising.
P IIS0092867405014042
here's a related study for you:
http://www.cell.com/content/article/abstract?uid=
To draw a software analogy:
Lets say the compiled binary + all configuration and data files of your program is DNA. There are parts of the of the program that define proteins and physical structures i.e. data files, string constants, etc. There are also parts that define the sequence of events from start to finish, growth, and change i.e. the instruction code that gets sent to the CPU for processing.
For DNA that controls memory and thought formation, we can think of this as meta-code or configuration files. These files dictate what parts of the instruction code get loaded, linked, and run and under what circumstances. This meta-code may not actually perform computation or build useful data (no growth, no respiration, no protein production), but it defines how the program (organism) operates.
e.g. One bit of code might load the appropriate vectorized FP library when there is hardware support. Or, biologically, one bit of DNA might make a person always remember technical information under normal circumstances.
---k--
</stupid>
Humans have 212 and chimps have 37???
That can't be right...I could have sworn we were a close relative....
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
Interesting, our brain is the way it is because of some DUF genes. Perhaps if one modified these genes enough, our brain could run lin... never mind.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Giving people MORE of this can make them... fly objects around a room and self heal. Anubis don't look too smart now does he.
Scientist could find no sign of the gene in President Bush. The scientists admit that this could mean that, as widely suspected, Bush is actually a simian.
Humans carry 212 copies of DUF1220, whereas chimps have 37 copies, and monkeys have only 30 copies.
Corporate CEOs carry between 3-6 copies of the gene, and no one has yet to find a middle management specimen exhibiting even a single instance.
In addition, a representative sample of Slashdot readers was tested and there was a remarkably strong correlation between their karma level and copies of the gene. Digg readers came in slightly above MySpace users with 10 and 4 copies, respectively. 8^)
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
I was waiting for that one. :)
Those geneticists are interpreting their results through rose-tinted spectacles.
The truth is somewhat more sordid.
Could be worse...could be Slurm....
(do I really need to put anything else in here for that to be funny?)
... a GUESS.
And this is peer review? How many copies of this do their peers have?
I thought it was Draft* of Uncertain Fermentation...
*or draught if you're from the other side of the pond.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
This whole genes talk is too common now to notice, but when you step back, and think about it, it really, really boggles the mind. All these creatures came from these little tiny strings playing with each other.
"It appears that humans have multiple carbon copies of a recently discovered gene that other primates lack. In particular, one sequence not so romantically or emotionally termed 'DUF1220' was mentioned . Humans carry 212 copies of DUF1220, whereas chimps have 37 copies, and monkeys have only 30 copies."
So chimps have 37 copies, monkeys have 30. Apparently... these animals are not primates. Because the claim is that other primates lack this gene.
If they ARE primates AND have copies of this gene... then... maybe it just makes us superprimates at best ?????
Our hands are unique and makes it easier for us to use tools. When we started "beating" and cooking meat we didnt need so big muscle jaws and teeth so we got more room for bigger brain. Neanderthal didn't make it because they didnt have big enough ear-bones thus lacked the balance to run and throw a spear and couldn't survive when the wood shrank; they snoke upon animals among the trees and stabbing them with a spear.
Our mind is structured so we are intelligent. Thinking about this I find it harder to belive in intelligent life other places in our galaxy, and the more important to take care of our earth http://jooh.no/ Religion and pseudoscience is boring it has nothing on science, long live science. Religious fanatic people are annoying and sometimes dangderous, but that is another discussion.
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
The Abstract of paper:
Extreme gene duplication is a major source of evolutionary novelty. A genome-wide survey of gene copy number variation among human and great ape lineages revealed that the most striking human lineage-specific amplification was due to an unknown gene, MGC8902, which is predicted to encode multiple copies of a protein domain of unknown function (DUF1220). Sequences encoding these domains are virtually all primate-specific, show signs of positive selection, and are increasingly amplified generally as a function of a species' evolutionary proximity to humans, where the greatest number of copies (212) is found. DUF1220 domains are highly expressed in brain regions associated with higher cognitive function, and in brain show neuron-specific expression preferentially in cell bodies and dendrites.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
..Well, we have quite certainly evolved from monkeys..
Are you sure you are using an impartial yardstick here? Imagine you are reading the history books a billion years from now.
Maybe the monkeys have a lot more sex, and are much more happy. They do not destroy the earth either.
Humans may be on a path to:
1. Create silicon based life that will evolve much fater than humans
2. Destroy and exhaust much of the earth resources.
This may not be very much more advanced than yeast in a vat of wine hurrying to extinction.
"Fix it"
Completely offtopic but there it goes:
It's Draft on the western side of the Atlantic because we're still trying to perfect the brews.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Now we know what the secret of NIMH was.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Blah.. who cares.. we can't get to work weeding out the morons until we find genese of substance whose carriers we need to exterminate. first target... the gene which causes idiots to pull to a stop and gawk at accidents on highways with a 40mph min speed limit.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
There are lots of DUFs.
Yup, there sure are! I usually sit on mine.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Keyword : Domain. Domains are subsequences within proteins. Conserved domains are named based on function, the original protein it was found in or a description of the overall structure structure and they typically have a similar shape and/or activity.
Therefore, Simpsons jokes aside, this isn't a protein named DUF1220, but rather a protein called MGC8902 that contains DUF1220 domains.
And to make the circle complete, "Domain of Unknown Function" sounds a lot like the brains of people who drink Duff. Or something. But I totally agree there are a lot of them.
"The genome projects for some species may be the final nail in the coffin, for again they are likely to face disappointment."
Tell me, which species is carrying out these 'genome projects'? They must be quite clever and resourceful.
There's a slight typo: DUFF1220 decoded à la Homer Simpson: Duff = Beer - translation: "Mmmmmmmm, Beer! Good." - QED: Proof of humanity. 1220 is the expiry date: Dec. 20th.
*** Don't be dull.***
Bottom line: humans can/will acquire resistance to the disease.
The last estimate I read was that humans would acquire resistance after about 40 more generations.
7 characters. pwned.
With how we treat eachother on this single planet of ours its more like we all carry the Dumb Fucking User gene rather than DUF gene......
Mod the gene -1 redundant.
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
If RIAA were in command, everyone would have only the one copy they paid to use. Note that I didn't say "own", because RIAA would be the owner of all the copies, you would pay to get a user license.
Me too. What this sentence "correlation does not imply causation" really means is that we may not be really sure of which is cause and which is effect.
In this particular cause, the direction from cause to effect is *VERY* clear to me: the presence of genes is the cause of whatever effect we are observing. If we have a characteristic, being human, correlated with the presence of one particular gene, I consider it absurd to suppose that being human could be the cause of that gene existing in us.
It might not be the *only* cause, but if that gene exists in statistically significant numbers depending on the relative degree of likeness to humans, then it's certainly one of the causes that make us human.
Given researchers' habit of experimenting on mice, is it only a matter of time before this gene is inserted into 2 baby mice, and one asks the other, "What we gonna do tonight Brain?" If so, we might not like the other's answer.
You know this scenario will happen one day ;)...
Waitress: Can I take your order?
Gentleman: Yes. I'd like 230 DUF1220s, a bagel and a small orange juice this morning.
I knew beer had something to do with it! :)
Those foolish monkeys don't realize how important having multiple backups is! 30 just isn't enough for us mighty humans.
This is actually a really big deal. There are a lot of genes out there in many organisms that have these really long nucleotide repeats in them just like this one. They are very very very difficult to sequence. The researchers deserve at least a pat on the back for this one.
On an another somewhat related note -- If there truly is one gene that is making us more human than a Bonobo chimp then, the next logical step is... Take this nifty gene and splice it into a chimp genome (easier said than done I'm sure, it's a lot easier with viruses) and see what you get.
So, if that were possible and a humanoid resulted, wouldn't that be interesting. What would Michael Behe say about Darwin's so called "black box" then!? LOL
A more less related thought... How much of the anti-evolution rhetoric is going to push science further and sooner into revealing what the anti-evolution crowd doesn't what to know?
There is more to being human than genes and flesh. A baby is raised without human contact may grow up to be a human being, but certainly not a functional human being. And homo sapiens existed for tens, or hundreds, of thousands of years before acquiring religion, language, art, etc., aspects of civilization we consider important parts of our humanity. Isn't the most we could ever find a gene that allows us to be human? To make an analogy, ink allowed the original manuscript of Hamlet to be Hamlet, but it's not a Hamlet material. It doesn't contain the essence of Hamlet-ness in any meaningful sense.
All Hail the Great FSM!
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
So if we splice 200 copies into that of a member of congress, they will become human? Crazy!
Step 1: Splice genes
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profit!!!
Nice :)
Just as offtopic, but for those of us who don't really know what the term draught really means in a beer context...
Sorry to throw the proverbial at the fan here, but how long before lobby groups have major objections to this kind of research? I'm not just talking about the religious right here, it includes the politically-correct left as well. We are supposed to believe in a world of harmony, tolerance, multiculturalism and equality, with any hint of the difference between human races being taboo. Anyone questioning the status quo risks being defamed, losing their job, spied on, and perhaps even sued, fined or imprisoned. Most of us have probably been taught at high school there is less genetic diffence between (for example) a white northern European and a black sub-Saharan African than there is between two white northern Europeans. Yet when one watches the olympics, it seems obvious there are real, fundamental biological differences betweem races.
Religious groups have previously tried to censor research and punish scientists who published views that would question their power. Fossil fuel lobbies tried to censor research into global warming, the environmental movement tried to stop research into nuclear power, and cigarette companies covered up research relating to smoking and health. Likewise, research into what makes us human and how we evolved could expose the mechanisms that make human races different. This is something that liberal and multicultural elites will not allow, even in the face of conclusive evidence.
So "Duf" makes us smart?
As Duffman would say (Obligatory Simpsons quote): "Oh yeah!"
-Styopa
Everyone is so focused on our big brains that I think it'll probably end up obscure something more fundamental. I am not saying that we aren't different because of our brain size, but I think it'll be something indirect that allows us to have such a big brain. There are some obvious ones like cranium size, but I'm thinking something at the immune system level.
Damn those domain squatters!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Unfortunately, it is a name technically... And those "hypothetical", "putative" rush in to the databases by hordes.
Being only distantly familiar with Pfam I have never seen DUFs in it before. I have to admit that have not touched Pfam since 2001.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Now we can genetically engineer those smart monkeys, chimps, etc. from Planet of the Apes...
Unique combinations of abilities arising in this way could lead to selective breeding adavantages and thus be conserved in the population.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Sorry about that, had the adaptive word engine open and the cat walked on the keyboard.
- parent poster