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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!"
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.
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.
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
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
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
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...
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.
That's because ID is creationism attempting to invade the realm of science. Do so and you subject yourself to science's rules.
That said, there is no amount of evidence that will convince the really staunch ID proponents. Then again, there are still people who believe in geocentrism.
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.
Sponsored Links
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.
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.
OH you did make me laugh. Thank you!
Born, to clone
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."
It's really not fair that you associate ID with geocentricism. Actually, there are a good number of scientists who support ID with actual scientific evidence. Granted, most of it doesn't try to support ID so much as it tries to disprove evolution. However, they are using science: the scientific method, actual data, real research, ect., and that can't be denied simply because of what they're pointing to. Anyone who disregards their findings simply on the grounds that they're trying to prove ID is as bad as the Catholic Church getting all worked up about the idea that Earth might not be the center of the universe. And, yes, there are a few (Ok, more than a few)creationists who never have, and never will, cared what scientific data says. However, there are also atheists who wouldn't change their views if God wrote his name on the moon in huge neon lights. People are stupid like that.
Geocentric? ... Rubbish! Reality is Ideocentric isn't it? Moi! ... :)
Then there's the Turtles of course
God set in motion the rules of physics and chemistry for the universe and created everything you see (and don't see).
We aren't a result of the universe.
It is a result of us.
It didn't come from us but it is here for us to exist.
What world do you live in where you can just state these kind of wild hypotheses with no evidence whatsoever and expect anybody to accept that as a reasonable argument?
Oh, that's right. The religious one where that actually is a perfectly compelling argument.
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
- 1) they'll regard it as a new revelation of [God]'s mystery
- 2) they'll regard it as neat information about the world, but irrelevant to their faith because their faith isn't derived from anything in the physical world, or
- 3) they'll regard it as a test of their faith
Thoreau once said, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." There's a lesson in there: there's no other possible world available to you than the one you've made space for in your mind. The religious are awake to their kind of day, and you and I are awake to a different kind of day based on different logical, rational, or asserted postulates (from which all else follows pretty rationally once you accept the prior postulate).Hey, for all we know, they might be right. (May his noodly gloriousness be merciful when the rapture comes, if that's the case.)
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
"You need to start thinking for yourself for once and not believe that everything you read is true."
How about if you eat your own medicine?
Bert
Also see "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, and "The Last Castle" by Jack Vance.
(Score:2, Insightful)
That's it Mr. Moderator
Report to base camp. CmdTaco will read you the mod guide while the rest of us injects you with some neurospin
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!
God and creationism is a marker that reads: "Stop thinking here". Your assertion that some god set in motion the rules of Physics and Chemistry is fantasy. Your drivel about us and the universe is logically inconsistent. Evolution has never been disproved. The data doesn't contradict it, and I don't see anyone inventing data to support the theory. Your statement that evolution is only a theory is asinine. Your statement that it doesn't make predictions is false (do some research). I have a better theory about the existence of the theory of Evolution: Someone made a guess and the data doesn't contradict the guess. Here's another theory that might assist you: Some skeletons don't last for long. Some of your other points I agree with.
Who ordered that?
Religious people and organizations can and do make predictions about reality based on their faith. Time and again, science has proven these religious predictions to be false. The religious people make a big fuss, end up looking like fools, and ultimately, dozens or hundreds of years later, change their beliefs, all the while pretending that their creed is unchanging, eternal, and infallible. Even if you could ever find two "Christians" who believe the exact same things, their beliefs would be very different from Christians from the 1st Century. Religion evolves much more quickly than complex organisms do.