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."
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.
Homer must be saying, "Told you so. We are not human without DUF".
"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
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.
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
I guess they don't have DRM. Good thing as if it were up to the RIAA, there would only be one human.
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.
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.
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.
RIAA and MPAA members found lacking new gene...
rooooar
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.
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.
...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.
Your post confuses me... did anyone ever think there was no genetic difference?
If DUF makes us smart, FUD must make us stupid.
God spoke to me.
Actually, 1220 refers to the fact that it will be released 1220 years after the second coming of Christ. (*Note: This release date is tenative and subject to change.*)
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
I think killing and eating a fishmonkeyrat is downright weird.</joke>
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
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.
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
>>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
"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! --
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.
(do I really need to put anything else in here for that to be funny?)
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*!
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."
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.