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Human Language Gene Changes How Mice Squeak
archatheist writes "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have engineered a mouse whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for a different (human) version. This is interesting because the gene is implicated in human language, and this has changed how mice squeak. 'In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.' The academic paper was published in Cell."
Today's biology is finite component analysis done at a massive scale.. Figuring out how a machine as big as a person works is going to take millenniums.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Although this kind of research is interesting, the final results of this would have wide ranging implications that I would rather avoid. Mainly, that is if animals were allowed to converse in a common language with humans, it would show us if they possess a consciousness, can reason, and what emotions that they can feel. This would either prove the sanctity of animal life or deny it, ultimately; I would rather keep the ongoing debate and not have a decision.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
in a nut shell, i'd support any form of genetic experiementation that does cause undue distress or suffering on an animal. call me a soft lefty, but i just can't stomach unwarranted suffering of animals. i feel worse for them than i do for most humans, because they don't understand what's happening and certainly don't bring it on themselfs.
once i was asked if i supported harvesting organs from animals to save people - I do, but only if it's done in a humane manner and the animals don't suffer. after all if we can't protect animals from cruelty what chance is there we will do the same for our fellow man?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Unfortunately I believe people will cross many such lines way before human society is ready.
A lot of scientists (and other people) seem to think just because it can be done, it should be done (and if they don't someone else will do it anyway).
Will human society be willing to give such transgenic mice, chimps and pigs the full rights as other humans? If we aren't, we shouldn't be doing stuff like this.
Even if such research can benefit humans in one way, it will cause big problems.
People may ask: nut who then decides what is allowed and how? If people could manage to decide that certain classes of experiments/research on humans are banned, I'm sure they can figure other stuff out.
And they should start figuring it out. It's clear we're like toddlers stumbling headlong without looking where we might end up.
Don't forget: if we start putting too many human genes into animals, it starts to be "experimenting on humans". And I think most of us would prefer to live in a world where certain experiments shouldn't be done on humans.
There's no end of other things to do. So do those first instead.
Nah, if we are not careful the monsters could be the scientists and rest of us.
From the link:
> However, there is no evidence the chimeric mice began to contemplate the meaning of life. We need to give such chimeric mice no more or less moral consideration than we already give laboratory mice.
Really? How do they know that - they don't speak mice.
And what about the humans who don't contemplate the meaning of life? Most of us don't contemplate the meaning of life every minute of our lives.
OK say 1% human is still not human enough. At what percentage does a subject become too human to experiment on?
Yes, look at it that way.
And they'd probably do things the other way round too - start adding nonhuman (not necessarily animal) parts to humans.
So maybe you might decide to reject an "upgrade" because you would be no longer be classed as human and thus be no longer eligible for human-only medical insurance or "NHS".
Just because the tech is ready, doesn't mean the laws, systems and societies are ready.
We should beware of popular reports of scientific discoveries: almost all the popular reports of FOXP2 claimed that it was the gene for language or even more ludicrously the gene for grammar - the truth is more complicated and far more interesting than that.
No-one should imagine that the development of language relied exclusively on a single mutation in FOXP2. They are many other changes that enable speech. Not least of these are profound anatomical changes that make the human supralarygeal pathway entirely different from any other mammal. The larynx has descended so that it provides a resonant column for speech (but, as an unfortunate side-effect, predisposes humans to choking on food). Also, the nasal cavity can be closed thus preventing vowels from being nasalised and thus increasing their comprehensibility. These changes cannot have happened over such a short period as 100,000 years. Furthermore the genetic basis for language will be found to involve many more genes that influence both cognitive and motor skills
Human mind needs human cognition and human cognition relies on human speech. Ultimately, we will find great insight from further unravelling the evolutionary roots of human speech.
I hate to break it to you but all mammals are already sentient. Every step on an animals tail? That noise it makes is proof of its sentience.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You really should not be attaching events that way. This is bad for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that you only get one event per element. Personally, I really like the observe method from prototype.js, but with what you are talking about MooTools might be better.
It is really pretty rare that you should have to pass variables that way. Just use objects and store your variables in that object.
They do however show that it IS possible for other browsers to support features that MS have invented, features that (many of them) actually make things better.
Yes, but a lot of them make life harder, and a lot of IE's quirks are just plain buggy. The point is that the web should be cross-platform: you have a standard and you code to it. Vendors should not have to implement features invented by a third party that may or may not be properly documented (ooxml anyone?). This is why we have the W3C to develop and innovate standards. Hell, MS helped write a lot of the standards that they don't implement.
Basically, whatever platform you're used to programming for, be it mozilla or ie, the other one IS going to seem alien to you, and stuff is frustratingly not gonna work on it.
A browser is not a platform. It should implement the standard so that we can code to it... "write once, run anywhere" should not be a paradigm reserved for Java.
But for you, the one you hate is IE rather than FF, which can only lead to the conclusion that IT'S SUBJECTIVE!
It is not subjective. There is a standard. While no browser implements it fully, IE is (still) the worst.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
What? No they wouldn't. Why go to all the trouble of genetically engineering a subhuman slave race when you've already got millions of untermenschen all over the place that you need to find a use for? The whole point of the Third Reich was to get rid of the inferior breeds, not to create more!
Mengele would probably have played with this technology, but as a matter of policy the Nazis were fixated on genetic purity. Cross-species gene tampering of this kind would probably have disgusted them.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
When we create chimera, we are playing god.
I'm sick and tired of people saying that, especially the people who say that like it's an inherently bad thing. I seriously don't get what's wrong with it. If "playing god" can improve the quality of human life, I'd say it's immoral not to.
This is a stupid argument because the average user needs a web browser to download another web browser, they don't have the disc lying around. (Can you even get a disc for Firefox?) They could technically do it via FTP, if they had any idea how, but they don't.
Taking the browser away from the user only hurts the user. IE's market share is plummeting anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By that logic, I hate to break it to you but all computers are already sentient. Ever take a hammer to a computer? That noise it makes is proof of its sentience.