Slashdot Mirror
The Human Mutation
eldavojohn writes "Scientists in China have announced finding the gene that makes us human. The article explains that prior work has shown that humans, as compared with the great apes from which we diverged over 5 million years ago, have a longer form of a protein (type II neuropsin) located in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. From the article: 'Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.' The team is urging further analysis of the extra 45 amino acids in type II neuropsin since they believe that chain may cause protein structural and functional changes. The research didn't link anything with this protein, simply identifying it as a very distinct difference between us and our closest cousins."
I for one, welcome our new english speaking tyrannical ape-like overlords.
Putting human brain genes in chimps, this is how it all starts. A thousand years from now some astronaut returning to earth is going to be saying "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!"
I like putting golf balls in the blowholes of whales.
The article explains that prior work has shown that humans, as compared with the great apes from which we diverged over 5 million years ago, have ...
Now that the prior work is already covered, the AACS can't copyright us.
You have 6bln more monkeys running around the Earth.
Great. Now someone will come up with a retrovirus or something that makes us all as dumb as Bush.
There's no way we could have evolved from other primates. Adding that many amino acid codes to dna through mutations would take like 10s of thousands if not millions of years, and the earth has only been around for like 8000! Intelligent design wins again, try again, Darwin!
longer form of a protein
As long as... a spaghetti noodle, perhaps?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...is that your pets have been already eating it for two months!
Chip H.
The Jews just put it there to throw us fine patriotic American Christians off. It's just what they did with the fossil record. Damn Jews!
no doubt some zealot will ruin the party with his unscience nonsense.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
1. Scientist suspects that there are differences between humans and apes.
2. Scientist looks for said difference.
3. Scientist discovers said difference.
4. World in awe of Scientists intellectual prowess.
5. Story makes Slashdot.
6. Jokes made about overlords and beowulf clusters.
7. World realizes that there are protein and amino acid differences encoded in our genes
8. World realizes that world already suspected as much and Scientist fades into obscurity.
9. "Neuropsin" ends up as most obscure Jeopardy answer EVER
This is cool and all, but unless we plan on manipulating those genes in Apes and three years later accepting simian dominance of our world I can't see how this impacts anyone but grant writers.
load "$",8,1
Or maybe diecreationismdie
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
well I'll be a monkey's uncle...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I hope Karma is real and he comes back as a piss-off research ape in a Chinese lab and rips some arms off of someone responsible.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We're all mutants? That can't be good...
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
... overstatement by the summary.
They did not actually find the gene which "makes us human," as that would actually be several million genes (1.2% of the human genome). They found a gene which causes apes to produce "neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory."
Tell me if I'm wrong (sources if you can find them) but don't apes already have near the level of learning and memory we have? They have some level of socialization and tool use, which are two of the important ideas that set us apart from "animals". IMO, a better breakthrough would be to see if apes have some sort of moral code, or even finding the genes that give us a voicebox. Speech is the one thing we have that no other animal does. Speech leads to language, which is really the only way (I can think of, at least) to exchange abstract ideas (another gene to look for, abstract thought).
Make your protein chain longer! For a limited time only!
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
The Human Mutation
[...]
simply identifying it as a very distinct difference
There are other genes different between humans and other apes. Identifying them requires something like a diff run, not the complex analysis reported in this story. Apparently lacking the human neuropsin gene doesn't disqualify submitters from Slashdot.
--
make install -not war
Are you saying that you believe that FSM created humans? What was the problem with the angels?
Why does FSM enjoy being worshipped so much? Nothing better to do? Lonely? Why does FSM care if anyone believes an unverifiable story? If a dog does not believe in its invisible master (or in a master that hides from the dog), should the dog be tortured?
The PhysOrg article doesn't say, but it's likely the mutation is only in one or a few base pairs; the "extra 45 amino acids" most certainly do not require 45 (if you're counting amino residues) or 135 (if you're counting base pairs) mutations. When making proteins, DNA is transcribed into pre-mRNA, which in eukaryotes (including chimps and humans) then undergoes a process called splicing (wikipedia). Splicing removes certain interim sequence segments (introns) and joins the remaining sections (exons) back together, before the final mRNA is translated into protein. This splicing process can often happen in several different ways for a given gene depending on a variety of factors. That's what they're talking about here -- some mutation in the coding sequence lead to splicing changes, which in turn lead to a more dramatic change in the final gene product (the protein). It only takes a single base pair mutation to cause alternative splicing.
They'll just find that it contains the 09 F9 number when the gene sequence has every two base pairs encoded as one hex digit. Then they'll sue everyone who has sex in the USA for "unauthorized trafficking" per the DMCA.
:)
The only good side of this is that, for once, Slashdotters will NOT be affected
The only thing that makes us human is GOD! Look forward to Hell, Slashdotters!
I open this topic, thinking I'm gonna get to hear that someone's finally able to shoot eyebeams or read minds and it's just some silly science thing. I demand powers!
This is one of a large number of variants between humans and apes. There's no reason to think this is "the gene that makes us human", they're not claiming it is, and reporting this not-especially-interesting news accurately would allow just as many moronic comments about creationism.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You created type II neuropsin in chimp brains! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!
... MUST I continue?
Born, to clone
Now, with the introduction of said protein, putting a hundred monkeys into a room with typewriters will indeed produce a work the likes of William Shakespear. Only now the chimps will each sue each other for infringing on each other's intellectual property.
To make us yellow and spineless like a Democrat.
To bad Monty Python has "Run away! Run away!" copyrighted, else the Dems could have a new party motto to go with their white flag.
That's not what my parrot said.
They'll be able to increase the genetic expression of this protein and create ultra intelligent humans? Maybe making us more human than we already are?
Soylent gene is people!
"Toilers of the world, disband! Old books are wrong. The world was made on a Sunday." V Nabokov
So, does this mean that if the gene is present in a fetus it is therefore a human -- not trolling, just raising the question
The Chinese will have super intelligent animal kingdom fighters in no time. We must not let the Chinese beat us to planting spies among wildlife.
I'm in the middle of reading The Uplift War and next I'm gonna get Startide Rising. I hope we "uplift" some chimps and see what happens.
You don't have to be Chinese/Jewish or wait for Passover/Gnu Years to enjoy matzo balls. Matzo balls are delicious dumplings made from unleavened bread meal, usually served in broth or soup.
INGREDIENTS:
* 4 eggs or egg substitute
* 1/2 cup club soda
* 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
* 2 Tbsp finely chopped parsley
* Salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 1 cup matzo meal
PREPARATION:
Whisk the eggs until blended. Now add the club soda, vegetable oil or schmaltz, salt and pepper. Easy on the salt, you can always add but you can never take away.
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Blend in the parsley and matzo meal. Cover and refrigerate this mixture for about 1 hour.
Bring about 5 quarts of water to boil. Rub vegetable oil on hands and form matzo balls with about two tablespoons of mixture. Drop in boiling water and simmer covered and don't peek (okay, maybe once or twice) for about 25 to 35 minutes. Serve in broth, to which add 1/4 teaspoon red pepper and 2 tablespoons vinegar.
For matzoh-miso soup, use miso paste to make the broth.
That protein is what makes us human... but that means that Soylent Green is people!!!
The research didn't link anything...
Maybe because it's...missing?
What?
the joke continues YOU!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The fact that they put this genes into chimps and they didn't magically become humans clearly shows that the summary is flat out wrong. I think it's pretty obvious that there is no *one* thing that makes you human, so the concept of a single gene that is responsible for "being human" is absurd. Is this one of many? Likely. A few years back FOXP2 was the big "human gene" and I'm sure there will be more.
For the humanity deficient. Compulsory vaccination with Type II Neuropsin enabling virus and the world may be cured of lawyerism in all its forms.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is another demonstration of the failure of the reductionist method to describe complex phenomena. Genetics is but a small portion of what 'makes us human', and this particular gene is but a small portion of genetics. Saying that one gene 'makes us human' is like saying "I've found the atom that makes this the Earth". People who insist that we are nothing but a product of our genetics are missing a very important point: reproduction is not a discrete process - it's a continuation of life, and therefore everything that is included in the parents' lives are also included in the makeup of the child, from body chemistry through to thought itself. Life is organised on many levels by many processes, NOT physical 'codes'. Genes exist, and are used, sure, but they are not the be-all and end-all.
What these reductionist scientists can claim is that they've found a gene that appears to be unique to humans. This is quite different from what they're claiming.
Calling this "the gene that makes us human" is quite a stretch, isn't it? Not only are there plenty of mutations all over the genome (like the FOXP2 gene that is associated with speech and appeared within the last 200,000 years in the human lineage), but slashdot summary seems to undermine it's own summary when it says, "Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin." If this was "the gene that makes us human", then shouldn't that last sentence read: "Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of a human"?
Mod parent informative.
If only the world knew what happens on slashdot..
My parents and grandparents make/made excellent matzoh ball soup. I usually put cayenne pepper in it instead of salt, though. The miso paste idea sounds awesome! I found a recipe for hot and sour soup, too, and I might try to combine it... maybe replace the tofu with matzoh balls or something.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Recent origin of a hominoid-specific splice form of neuropsin, a gene involved in learning and memory. Mol Biol Evol. 2004 Nov;21(11):2111-5. Epub 2004 Jul 28. At an impact factor of about 5... not bad.
Neuropsins have been implicated in being important in memory (approximated by long-term potentiation - some very artificial forms of LTP require neuropsin).
What if we can reproduce with them? (shudder) Cause if we can, someone will.
I can only see bad coming out of something like this and really not much potential good.
Well if Monsanto, or any of the other big firms into genetic research produce them, you can be sure that they'll be sterile. They wouldn't want anyone breeding their own after delivery; they'd want you to go back to the source for another fresh batch of clones.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Geocentric? ... Rubbish! Reality is Ideocentric isn't it? Moi! ... :)
Then there's the Turtles of course
I love how these articles about Human vs Great Ape DNA always ignore the fact that Humans have 46 chromosome and Great Apes have 48.
So THAT'S what the monolith did!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
"Junk DNA" and "millions of genes in humans" are but a few things that have been mentioned in the comments and are complete nonsense. As usual, the article is really light on the specifics and exagerates the actual scientific achievements. Using common tools (BLAST, ClustalW, etc.) it is rather easy to first of all compare genomes from different organisms. No big deal on that part. A lot of people do it all the time with various organisms and discover a lot differences along the way. And it shouldn't be a surprise that if a protein has an additional 45 amino acids, that it would then affect its structure. I'm not saying it isn't interesting or shouldn't be further investigated, but c'mon, this isn't earth shattering. And now all the people here throwing around various biological terms like they're candy... The terms that are relevant for their research are:
- Introns (regions within genes that aren't transcribed into mRNA)
- Exons (regions that are transcribed into mRNA)
- Alternative splicing (different proteins can be made out of the same gene, but different exons were used. Ie an alternative combination of exons was "spliced" together)
- Genes (encodes one or multiple proteins)
- Promoter (place where another protein can bind to and "promote" transcription of the gene)
- Codon (triplet of bases; ex: AUG, TTA, GTC, etc.)
- mRNA (string of basepairs from which codons are read and translated into amino acids --> protein)
- Non-coding region (yeah, guess what that means)
It's a pretty brief overview, but please google or wikipedia a few minutes about this topic before posting. Wikipedia-ing the terms i've mentioned should give a solid understanding of what's important to understand for this article.
scientists really don't have any kind of life, do they?
-Tony
All of you slashdoters think, that this gene must give us humans an improvement - to make superior specie - Humans. You all think that there is something in humans that makes us better than apes. What if we are only stronger and not really better ?
What if this gene codes "greed and selfishness" or some strange social behaviour. For example: the gene that forces us to stay in groups and obey (forced to study spoken languages, C#, Java, PHP syntax, to obey RIAA).
Such genes would make us stronger, but the question is, if we would be better because of them.
That all people residing in Africa lacked this gene.
Once and for all proving that blacks really are just apes.
Lots of other animals either have or can be taught language, and many more than that have a stricter and more defined social structure. (Morality has no objective meaning.) "What makes us human" is not any one thing, but rather a confluence of many factors:
We're sufficiently social
We're can think abstractly
We can communicate abstractly
We don't make our children figure things out on their own
We're omnivorous, which makes agriculture much easier to develop
We have highly dexterous manipulators
We're aggressive enough to wipe out any natural predators
We're horny enough to fill any available niche quickly (geologically speaking).
There are countless examples of other species that have one or two of these traits.
I'll take "Animal Genitalia, Audio Clues", for $600 Alex.
[Thank you Colin Mochrie, Who's Line is it Anyway?]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have filter set up that adds "-6" to anything you nerds think is funny (but of course, isn't). Flagging stuff you find funny as "Insightful" or "Underrated" is ruining my bliss. PLEASE STOP IT!
George Bush needs to do everything within his power to keep this technology from Iran! They will leak this tech to terrorists and next thing you know we'll have suicide bombing monkeys swinging through New York! I say preemptive strike! We are in imminent danger from the terrorists monkeys!
It's what gives Glagnar's Human Rinds that special human-y flavor.
Glagnar's human rinds! It's a buncha muncha cruncha human!
You can then introduce it to various different animals, I would love to see winged humanoids, gilled...
Also see "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, and "The Last Castle" by Jack Vance.
If you produce a monkey capable of being commanded to do the most basic tasks, somewhere a million PHBs will replace human workers with it.
Can it sew shoes? Well, cool. All those jobs were moved to inhuman sweatshops in poorer countries long ago. Imagine the savings if you don't even have to pay those salaries. Just dig some bunker with a thousand monkey cages, and make them sew for 18 hours a day, for the cost of just some water and biomass as food. Ok, they'll probably wear out pretty quickly at that rate, but you can always replace them and use the previous ones as extra protein for the next generation.
Can it operate a phone and compare simple questions to a canned FAQ? (Not necessarily intelligently or successfully, mind you.) Yay. There go the first level tech support jobs. Let's be honest, it _is_ a cheap monkey job as far as every manager in the organisation sees it. Level 1 is there just to deflect the trivial stuff from reaching the expensive level 2 guys, and occasionally discourage some people from escalating even non-trivial stuff. If you're a qualified nerd in a level 1 job, well, you have my sympathy, so take it as: you don't belong there.
Ok, so the monkeys probably won't have a larynx capable of human speech, but I'm sure someone will figure out some text-to-speech scheme.
For that matter, can it operate a keyboard? Well, the drive of the last half a century straight was to buy expensive tools and believe that now even less qualified burger-flippers can write your programs with them. Never mind that that guy is incapable of abstract algorithmic thought and too bored to even learn the language. The nice salesman from IBM/MS/BEA/whatever said that you don't need expensive smart guys any more. Any semi-trained monkey can write great enterprise programs with their tools in 21 days, don't you know? And that nice salesman plays such a nice game of golf, that he's surely trustworthy.
If that sounds like made-up fiction, sadly, it isn't. I actually know of two departments which hired their programmers by reverse auction. Whoever wants less money gets the job, no further qualifications needed or questions asked. Literally. Needless to say, they ended up with people about as sharp as a bowling ball. In the words of Foghorn Leghorn, "I've seen, AH SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer." Some were just now discovering stuff like that they need to put quotes around a string, and some were having trouble understanding why. One guy had trouble understanding why the variable he declared in the constructor isn't visible in another method. Etc.
Plus, think of all the other advantages of putting semi-human monkeys in those jobs. For starters, who's gonna force you to pay for overtime or let them unionize? Schedules of 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, here we come. I'm sure some PHB (e.g., at EA) would ejaculate in his pants out of sheer joy at _that_ thought.
Or imagine the joy on some "your job could be the next to move to India" PHB's face, when he can replace it with the even more demeaning threat of, "remind me why I don't hire one of those new monkeys to do your job?"
Etc.
I'm sure there's a fun new economy just waiting to be discovered.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In the past human societies may not have had the ability to create subspecies genetically, but they did have the ability to declare entire groups of people as a subspecies and treat them accordingly.
Women, Slavs, Africans, Native Americans, subjugated peoples of all kinds have at one time or another been declared a human "subspecies" and have been forced under duress to labour without pay or freedom. It's a common thread throughout history one which we think in our enlightenment will "never happen again", but we are really just fooling ourselves.
If we did manage to create a species that could talk, understand our speech, perform complex chores, (work in nuclear plants!), it would be ridiculous to state that they were entitled to no rights whatsoever. They would clearly be self aware and as intelligent as us. However, people would declare them to be "inferior", and they would become the new slave caste in society. People would justify this with all kinds of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, but at the end of the day we'd be no different from the old southern whipmasters going out of their way to justify an unjustifiable act.
May the Maths Be with you!
The popular view of DNA is that genes determinve what you look like and the other 98% of the human DNA is "junk". Well that's not quite true.
In fact a big part of the the DNA that doesn't code for proteins is tied up in a system that regulates which genes get turned on and when. (This system is in turn driven by the proteins which come from the genes, just to make things confusing.)
So the big difference between humans and chimps is not the actual genes but the system that describes how development happens - this sytem decides how long your legs are, how hairy you are how big your brain is to a much greater extent than the actual genes do.
I'm no geneticist, but couldn't they use this to induce a mutation in the DNA of ape embryos and thus breed something akin to what the 'human' mutation would have looked like?
call me when they do a talking n teeth brushing fox that i can marry :3
Huxley would be proud.... We're on our way to making Brave New World and a whole host of worker drones. Load up the Soma, fellas.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
*WARNING* I think it's relevant to your post and this topic, but the site is completely filled with advertisements and pop-ups.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Dude, this is why aliens came here to make us humans.
This is a 60000 yr training session, now we will make 120,000,000 spaceships for them in 2050. And a whole modern planet built nicely.
All they have to do is activate the 'do not reproduce gene'
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This announcement brought to you from the same scientific community that finds incredible dinosaurs,cures that appearantly only work on chinese peasants and still promote the use of rhino horn over viagra.
Who can believe these attention whores?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Let me guess, they are looking for a way to create a species they can even exploit more then their own people in manufacturing.
I wouldn't worry too much. In most countries animals have more rights and are better treated than your average human being. I'm still waiting for approval as a bi-ped canine.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Infinite number of Cheneys, .
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The mix is good too. But cook them in broth, not water, they're much tastier that way.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
What makes us really human is the recognition of the unknown, belief in something that we cannot sense with every single sense of the five including technological extensions of it..., something that we will never be able to prove or disprove.
It is the recognition of God, the concept of God. No matter if you accept it or deny it, or say "I do not know". If you capable to answer the question "Is there God?" in any way: positive, negative or agnostic way, once you have been presented with it, then you are a human.
I've heard recordings of whale song that sound pretty damn reverent, so I s'pose we should regard whales as presumptively human, right? At least until we're smart enough to learn the lyrics?
OTOH, any product of conception cannot possibly be human until its brain is sufficiently developed to support the kind of highly abstract reasoning that you propose. This would be a very strong argument for abortion rights advocates. In fact it goes beyond that— it would be a strong argument for infanticide.
<p voice="ChurchLady">Well, isn't that special?
Just because they found this gene expressed in the prefrontal cortex of humans and chimps doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the development of it. This is a problem the evolutionary-development people have all the time: expression does not equal causation. Just because we have a different flavor of this gene in our PFC doesnt mean that it actually does something. If they really wanted to demonstrate this they would have to create a trasgenic chimp when the human gene had been inserted in place of its own...I am not aware of anyone capable of doing such an experiment currently. Besides, why do you think it is in Genome Watch or whatever journal instead of Nature or Science?
So minor changes between kinds of animals does happen (not from apes to humans though), this is observed. Why doesn't somebody show us some examples of the other parts of your beloved religion? Why don't we still have "missing links" running around? Here are the six
1) Cosmic evolution: nothing exploded and created hydrogen gas.
2) Chemical evolution: hydrogen "evolved" into higher order elements.
3) Stellar and planetary evolution: these elements somehow got together and formed stars.
4) Organic evolution: life created itself.
5) Macro evolution: this single celled organism "evolved" into a multi-cellular organism. One kind of organism changes to another (i.e. a bananna evolved into a horse)
6) Micro evolution: (which HAS been observed and IS scientific) this is minor changes in kinds of animals. A wolf, dog and coyote all have a common answer.
When you do, go to drdino.com and claim your $250k prize! If not, there will be no other option but for there to be a special creation by a loving God who owns you and will judge you. You can choose to ignore it, but it is the truth.
We could test to see if Anne Coulter is lacking said gene, and prove once and for all she's an inhuman demonspawn?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Define 'man'. I bet they dont qualify.
Potential good? Well we could use another captive labour force around here, since Lincoln screwed that up for us a while ago.
Horses and donkeys have different numbers of chromosomes and that does prevent a hybrid. Unless you wanted grandchildren or boys :-)
The pieces of chromosomes are all rearranged as in humans and chimps, and they find their matching components.
What if you disovered the gene/protein differences and then amplified them? Or changed them slightly to make more powerful human brains?
They are already trying this for athletes. For example humans have more of a muscle growth inhibitor called myostatin than some other species. Occasional mutations or very strong people have less myostatin. So some doctors are looking into suppressing this protein chemically or genetically.
While they clearly hope it is the single significant change, honestly they did not give much evidence that it was. They kind of made a good claim that it was one of several significant changes, but no where close to having evidence that it was the major change, let alone the only significant one.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And what if we "screw up" and the subspecies is actually more intelligent than us? Stronger? More naturally-selectable?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Now all we need is to mute the humans, sink the statue of liberty to her neck in beach sand and let the time take its new course...
Type II Neuropsin is people!
How long before this and any other uniquely human differences are patented, and thus a company will be able to say they have a patent on humanity?
Will this have to happen before people finally agree that our patent system is horribly flawed?
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
fox:"Stick it in my mouth, I won't bite!"
*CHOMP*
fox:"Sorry, it is just in my nature."
Unless you're confusing "morality" with "mortality".
where is Charleton Heston when you need him?
... Only an idiot, a liar, or a journalist would confuse that with "making us human." An idiot, a liar, and a journalist walked into a bar. He bought a drink, then left.Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
I assume that someone has a patent on this protein making it ... Intellectual Property.