Slashdot Mirror
All Humans Are Mutants, Say Scientists
Hugh Pickens writes "In 1935, JBS Haldane, one of the founders of modern genetics, studied a group of men with the blood disease hemophilia and speculated that there would be about 150 new mutations in each human being. Now BBC reports that scientists have used next generation sequencing technology to produce a far more direct and reliable estimate of the number of mutations by looking at thousands of genes belonging to two Chinese men who are distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805. To establish the rate of mutation, the team examined an area of the Y chromosome which is unique because, apart from rare mutations, the Y chromosome is passed unchanged from father to son so mutations accumulate slowly over the generations. Despite many generations of separation, researchers found only 12 differences among all the DNA letters examined. The two Y chromosomes were still identical at 10,149,073 of the 10,149,085 letters examined."
...to the SubGenius and Devo fans in the house.
If "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "it was beauty that killed the beast" then "please stop staring at me".
looks uncomfortable.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Does this apply to non-humans as well?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"...was more difficult than finding an ant's egg in an emperor's rice store."
I have got to work that into an ordinary conversation someday: priceless!
Demented But Determined.
Forgive me if I'm wrong. I'm fairly sure I have at least a basic grasp of the idea of statistical sampling, as used to infer the traits of a large population using a smaller representative sample from that population. But don't you still need a sample size bigger than two to make inferences about all of humanity?
And here we have scientific evidence that human mutation is working as Designed.
Weird, I'm suddenly craving a bowl of spaghetti.
In the movie, I seem to remember them saying that the mutations come from the father, how women are mutants I don't know. I guess they just wanted to give Pyro more lines.
My mutant super power is my ability to get depressed and lose focus. Oh man, I wish I'd gotten that cool one that gives you resistance to malaria and painfully inflamed fingers and toes. Mine seems kinda useless by comparison.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
From what I think he said in a early X-men comic (number 50 something) during a television talkshow with the other guest as the design engineer of the Sentinels.
So we aren't planning to go ahead with the Sentinel program I hope. Anyone have a list of politicians I can contact to try and convince them to vote no against Mutant cleansing?
SMBC is completely accurate on this count.
Y = 1/300th total chromosome
3600 mutations total
8 generations in 200 years
450 per generation
5 in protein coding section of genome
That cant be generally true otherwise all Chinese people would look identical. oh wait...
In Mother Russia, the mutants are Humans.
I guess we'll have to wait a few million years for teenage mutant ninja turtles to walk the streets of NYC... Splinter may come earlier, have you seen the size of those rats in NYC?
Given what we know about biology, every living thing, including viruses, are mutants (or at least descendants of mutants).
The article title has to be one of the more braindead ones I've seen here on Slashdot, and I've been around for a while. (And somehow I don't understand how it's connected with the information in the summary.)
OTOH, I'm real tired....
Hold on let me find out ....... aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!!
Some more than others.
Rather than making me think that all humans are mutants, this made me think: Wow, over a runtime of 204 years, the DNA copying process has an accuracy of 99.99988%, or an error rate of only 0.00012%.
I think we'll be hard-pressed to replicate that level of awesomeness in computers anytime soon.
Alphanos
Basically, they should be looking at the men that are from the same place (assuming that one of the two live in the exact same area and others ppl can be found). I think that they will find many of them have the same sets of mutations. The reason is that I believe that many of these mutations are from virus, not from random mutations. If from radiation/chemical (i.e. random), then you will not see the same mutations across ppl that exist in same area. But if from virus, you will see that many of these are similar (though possibly not in the exact same area of the strands).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Try this in Alabama, where they can use the terms wife,mother,and daughter interchangeably.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
We are all Teenage Mutants...
...then it sounds about right.
HR brainz
Any rate would be slow enough for them to use as propoganda. The thing is not to go "zomg, they have propoganda" but instead to just ignore them and get on with applying the scientific method. Remember, the key to science is to never ever ever say "I know exactly how it works" instead to say "hey, I have decent evidence that this is how it works", and to be prepared to scratch/adapt your theory at any moment when some contradictory evidence comes along.
It doesn't matter if it's slow enough -- the ID crowd will either cite it as "evidence" that "evolution !exists" or they will say something like "God^H^H^H The Designer is clearly controlling [bullshit][bullshit][bullshit]". Those people have no shame and no logic.
$ make available
It's 57,772,954 base pairs:
http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?org=Human&db=hg18&position=chrY
That's off to the sewers to all of you, mutants !
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Why is your response to a scientific study to ask whether "it will give ammunition to ID proponents"? Evolution is science, the question should be "does this information support the dominant theory?" The way you are thinking sounds just as dogmatic (bad) as the ID proponents.
if the y chromosome remains relatively unchanged, and the X is subject to cross splicing with other x chromosomes (from either parent) that must mean that females at least as far as the sex-linked traits are concerned) evolves much faster than males, since there's rarely any opportunity for diversity in the Y chromosome?
So next time a woman calls you "barbaric" etc you can say Got that right!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"I think that they will find many of them have the same sets of mutations. The reason is that I believe that many of these mutations are from virus[es], not from random mutations."
That would be an interesting direction of investigation.
Quote from the press release: "Fortunately, most of these [mutations] are harmless and have no apparent effect on our health or appearance." They don't know that. That is ENTIRELY speculation.
Even if it was ammo, would you really listen to someone who believed that humans were formed from dust or a clot of blood and continue to believe the parlor tricks of old mystical texts?
Say anything you want to support the ID crowd, but the only argument they have is faith. Faith is meaningless for science.
When it comes down to it, the most faithful do not go to see their priest if their baby is sick. They take it to a doctor, because science and medicine work, and no matter how much they want to deny it, faith does not.
We are D-E-V-O!
8 of the 12 mutations were from the cell lines used during the work.
Fun article. Not statistic but fun nonetheless.
For those who don't know systematics, the Y is used precisely because it changes little over time. Ditto for mitochondrial DNA (which you get from Mom alone). The idea is to determine relatedness via differences and commonality. The y changes slowly therefore more commonality, so easy to make a tree. The 'non-coding' regions are being found to contain transcription factors, controlling factors, and lost bits of mutation or viruses (you have retroviruses in your DNA fyi).
We've already taken control of our own evolution, for better or worse:
Does anyone else see the conflict of interest inherent in that statement? This is what we humans do: we change the system before we even understand it. We try to "cure" autism before we even grasp its genetic or evolutionary significance.
We won't ever be able to get an accurate answer to this question: we've already been busy contaminating the evidence. We worry about seeding Mars or other planets with terrestrial microbes before we get a chance to conclusively rule out independent signs of life, but we think nothing of poisoning our own genetic well before we even understand what's down there and why.
They looked at thousands of genes in the Y chromosomes of two Chinese men.
There are (at current count) only about 70 genes on chromsome Y.
Typical mass market science reporting.
Y chromosomes don't recombinate.
No Y-combinators? So how do you do recursion?
If I want I can set up two 4TB raids on my server at home (assuming I had more disk space), and issue the command dd if=/dev/mdx of=/dev/mdy bs=1M count=4000000. Then I could do a diff on the two volumes. I'd be shocked if they had any errors at all.
If you turn off the error correction and the sparing of unusable sectors, you would indeed be shocked. Here's an idea, buy some of those video disk drives that Seagate makes.
Best regards.
And *still* we are all X-men ?
How genetically similar would we be to our ancestors at historically, scientifically or otherwise interesting times? At Creation? The appearance of Homo sapiens? The destruction of the Death Star?
I have my answers, you'll be graded in the morning.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
7-10 generations isn't that many...
The Y chromosome doesn't get to recombine, so measuring the mutation rate of the Y chromosome only gives us a limited understanding of mutations in general.
Lack of recombination means you don't get to measure mutations that consist of genes being brought together for the first time in an individual. It also eliminates entire classes of accidental mutations. On the other hand, it removes the opportunity for some types of in-cell DNA repair.
Furthermore, the Y chromosome is less interesting than most. It contains very few working genes, precisely because it is not subject to the most important DNA repair mechanism of all: sexual reproduction.
The shareholder is always right.
Probably the same way we account for the dramatically higher rates of "mutanism" amongst the population subset "slashdot" reader, or the subset that are SCIFI fan...
Evaluating whether this supports evolution is a personal experience,you insensitive clod!
On a more serious note, this is not my only response. In fact, the first part of my post queries if these 'mutaitons' are the same ones that contribute to evolution. And no, I sincerely do not know the answer from the information given in the article.
Also, the reason for worrying about this being ammo for ID proponents is because high on their agenda is to sound legitimate by using scientific data to mask the hand waving that lies underneath their explanation. It matters a lot because a significant part of the society I live in believes in this bullshit including courts. If I am going to hear this argument in a discussion, I would like to explain it scientifically.
Lastly, you are perfectly correct that I am dogmatic about my refutation of ID and creationism. Not because of the statement of those theories, but because of the irrational way in which they are 'proven'.
If someone told me that there exists an even prime number other than 2, I would find it rather incredulous and be very highly skeptical about it since I can disprove it logically. I would, however, dogmatically dismiss the person if their explanation was that I should unquestioningly believe in it so that I may be rewarded for my trust when I die. Since I cannot disprove an illogical argument logically, the only way to refute it is rather dogmatically. It's not about not believing the statement. It is about not having sufficient reason to believe in it.
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Using a tiny, well-conserved region of DNA to extrapolate genome-wide mutation activity is almost meaningless.
Are there more, fewer, or the same proportion of "jumping genes" on that chromosome as the larger genome?
What are the relative proportions of the DNA bases? Some base substitutions are more common than others in SNPs, so if the selected region of the genome is more, or less, rich than the overall genome it will be more, or less, likely to experience mutation.
I don't quite get how this number is by itself significant of something or other.
Yes, it's a small number compared to the total number of base pairs. But let's remember, this is a digital code. Some bits are more significant than the average.
You can't just say "the gene is 99.994% correct". Just one stop codon can break a whole gene. We are all walking around with one-bit errors in our genes that used to be able to make Vitamin C and an anti-HIV factor. Just one-bit errors but oh, very high consequences, like scurvy and AIDS.
Ultimately, yes, mutations like the ones studied here drive evolution and speciation. They are the mechanism behind generating completely new genetic information. However, in terms of following the genetics of a diverse population, genetic recombination events like crossover have a greater effect on the changes from generation to generation than mutations.
As this experiment shows, you might have accumulated a few hundred single nucleotide polymorphisms- differences at one base pair- in the lineage from your great-grandfathers to you. However, so much shuffling of the genetic deck occurs in each generation's gametes that, as may be obvious to you, two people (siblings, for example) can be closely related but display very distinct traits. The reason why you'd want to focus on the Y chromosome if you wanted to isolate the mutation rate is that it doesn't undergo all of this shuffling; you probably only have a maximum of one (there are a few XYY males)and it passes down patrilineally with only random mutations to change it. Those two men tested could well have very similar Y chromosomes, but otherwise be genetically very different.
I would argue that there is a survivorship bias in studying mutation in the Y chromosome, though. There aren't many genes on the Y chromosome, but the ones it does have tend to be critical for producing healthy, fertile males. It might be the case that mutation rates that might be tolerable on other (somatic) chromosomes produce completely inviable offspring when they occur at that rate on the Y.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
I'm not quite grokking this part: "Of the 12 differences, eight had arisen in the cell lines used for the work. Only four were true mutations that had occurred naturally through the generations." Anybody want to explain? I don't get the "8 arising from cell lines used" part. Sounds like there were only 4 "real" mutations? And the other 8 where some consequence of the process used to do the sequencing?
All one needs to do to prove humans are mutants is deal with the lady behind the counter at the DMV (as I did today). Much simpler. At least that proves government employees are mutants and you can extrapolate the rest from the people voting for those who hired them. QED
If you are interested in this sort of material, try this: Dynamics of adaptation and diversification: a 10,000-generation experiment with bacterial populations. Bottom line: mutation matters. Notice the article is 15 years old.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
I'm sorry, you are not allowed to imply that science employs faith.
In fact, science is so skeptical of itself, it changes when the evidence presents itself. It's like comparing an adult who learns from their mistakes with a toddler who insists that he's always right, regardless of the facts.
Inherent in all of science is "as far as we know." So, as far as I know, someone who has studied medicine is aware of a majority of the maladies that can affect my child. Because he's using methodologies that have been, for the vast majority of them, proven in labs and in studies. They have been removed of anecdotal experience, and tested with repeatable, verifiable results that anyone else is free to question. This method of thinking has delivered to us the modern world. The mystical belief in the supernatural had some philosophical high points, but did not improve the lives of anyone but the top of the clergy. In tens of thousands of years, it gave us almost nothing. Only when we threw out the assumption that God existed, and that everything had a plan, and began to think for ourselves and stop trusting hearsay like miracles, did society evolve beyond the society that the Greeks had thousands of years ago.
Faith is when you read some nonsense like killing a bird on an alter and dipping it in other bird's blood can cure a man of leprosy. Faith is taking your daughter with acute diabetes to someone who has no medical training, watching her die a slow and painful death while they babble white noise to zero effect, and then claiming that it was God's will that they're such stupid fucks that they didn't take their daughter to a hospital.
I have run out of patience for the religious. It is time they take their fairy tale nonsense to their private homes, and stop inflicting it on the world just because they're afraid of dying.
You have so many things wrong here that there is absolutely NO reason to try and correct you on it. Just so that you know, all virus incorporate their RNA/DNA back into your DNA. Some will actually excise snippets of your DNA out to replace theirs in there. And mutations are not just base pair changes, but also addition as well as deletions. Finally, just because a virus can hit any of the chromosomes does not preclude the ability to hit the y chromosomes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Tell me something new, like "You just one the lottery!"
If suppose we measured the number of mutations between one of the descendants and the 1805 ancestor, is it safe to say that actually there arose not 12 but about 6 mutations _compared to the ancestor_?
From TFA: "Now BBC reports that scientists have used next generation sequencing technology to produce a far more direct and reliable estimate of the number of mutations by looking at thousands of genes belonging to two Chinese men who are distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805."
The cynic in me asks how they made sure they were actually related. It's not precisely unheard of for a woman to stray and for a man to raise a child not his own.
Unless you're getting paid for that research. Then you hold out until every proponent of your theory realizes there is satisfactory evidence to discount it.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Both links, including the story on the Sanger institute's own page, suggest that this team studied only one set of relatives. I realize this is a lot of work and there aren't many people who would make good test subjects, that you knew were distant relatives. But I can't get over the idea of testing exactly one pair and making sound conclusions from it. Seems like they're assuming those 12 mutations were gradually accrued. Maybe the actual rate of mutation is much lower, except for Grandpa Li who wore a uranium codpiece every day and 10 of the mutations occoured then.
My point is determining the number of mutations between two people is impressive biology, but saying that's a universal constant is overstating it.
A geneticist (one of those people who like to play God) named JBS? Is that short for Jeebus?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
This is nothing new. According to evolutionary theory, all species are constantly mutating.
Whether those mutations are beneficial or not is determined by how well its carrier survives. Therefore, if I mutate and grow elephant feet, that won't help me survive any better and would probably increase my chances of dying off.
However, if I were to mutate and develop the ability to hear 2x better than my fellow homosapiens, I would survive and thus reproduce, making the mutation a part of future generations and eventually integrating it into the general population
through the interbreeding of my offspring with others. Thus, survival of the fittest (and those best mutated).
and the proper attire is, of course, pirate.
As a practicing ninja, I take exception to this blatant lie.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a guitar to go play.
From Wikipedia:
If it's been useless for 63m years, with no selective pressure to keep it static, it will have accumulated a lot more errors than that. From the same article, my emphasis:
Also, a single base-pair can be in one of four states, and so stores two bits of data, making 1-bit errors impossible.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
It's astounding...
I'm no expert in this *biology* or *math* thing (anymore), but the poster is misleading, if not wrong. Regardless, they failed at their math. If you observe 12 changes in a sequence 10,149,085 nucleotides in length, then your mutation rate is 12/10149085. Follow? Ok, now here is the big leap: The size of the human genome is 3.25x10^9. That is 3,250,000,000 which the observant will notice is a larger number than 10,149,085. At this point we should be thinking, are we really comparing 12 to 150? It's not as straightforward as all that, and I suppose you can't blame the poster for not mentioning a couple nuances...
If you project the mutation rate on the size of the human genome, sort of like this guy we know (Haldane), you might notice that we expect that maybe there would be 3840 changes. Forgive the massive oversimplification, but trust that this is totally in the spirit of the original. Now, there has been about 7.3 generations. So if we take the "distance" you have to travel from each to get back to the common ancestor, that's roughly 15 (7.3 x 2 and round up for some padding). So with 3840 mutations / 15 generations we end up with about 260 expected mutations per generation. This is about twice the 150 Haldane expected, but considering the tech they had in 1935, that's not too far off is it? So, are we talking 260 vs 150, or 12 vs 150?
Moral: Whenever you read stories where math and biology overlap, do the math yourself before you start. Chances are that they didn't.
By the way, I used Wolfram Alpha for the definition of "size of the human genome" and "average length of a generation".
The debate goes on.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
SB
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about ;)
It's useless and it accomplishes nothing.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever,
SB
But perhaps it should be brought up again. We all have so much time to waste, after all. Love is gonna cure us. Really.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about ;)
if you can read this, you've surfed usenet. But if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
Meh.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Then what use is it?!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
. . . we're all owned by Disney?
After much scholarly thought given to the matter, I believe Kansas to be the result of the dreaded Zombie Virus. This was predicted as a probable result of Global Warming, ice flows containing the one million-year-old Z. Virus eventually would de-ice, leading to such contaminated areas we are now witnessing such as the Kansas Sector.
Even a basic grasp of concepts such as evolution will tell you that every living thing is a mutant.
This seems to prove the exact opposite. If the Y chromosone went fairly unchanged, that means few mutations occurred and most of the genetic differences were due to breeding. Breeding also happens to be a code correction system.
So I am not seeing how the title relates to the content provided. Or am I missing something?
the Y chromosome is passed unchanged from father to son
Apologies for the possible obvious question, but I Am Not A Geneticist:
This is stating, at least to me, that there is no difference (barring irrelevant for this question mutations) between the Y chromosomes of two full sibling brothers.
If this is so, how can paternity tests determine between brothers, or can they? Or even between one man and his own father.
And if it is true, then genetically its actually irrelevant. The only distinction coming from social issues (and boy howdy, there's going to be some if it's an actual question)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
A: We are DEVO.
Praise "BOB"!
GP here. I see your point: nonscientific behavior cannot be handled by purely scientific arguments.
The abstract of the article seems to say there were actually 4 changes in total. But these changes are in the 'letters' - the T(U)CAG. These are grouped by three's into Codons (I think) and this process adds a lot of redundancy since there are only 20 different amino acids - multiple codons code for the same amino acid. So, changing GCU into GCG makes no difference in the amino acid produced since GCU, GCC, GCA, GCG all code for Alanine. Given the 64 letter combinations code for 20 amino acids, the true error rate may be 1-2 changes over the 13 generations.
Being that now I am officially a mutant.
Super powers:
Being Super Annoying, even the Amazing Randi has to admit I am so annoying that it is not natural and actually a super power.
Inadvertently trolling people, as some comments I made here that tried to be funny got rated as flamebait or troll. I figure this is a good distraction power be annoying and troll Magento that keeps him annoyed and so upset that he cannot concentrate and then Wolverine can attack him when he isn't looking and knock him the f- out.
Super debugging skills, I can debug a program not matter how buggy it is or how impossible it seems.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
After throwing so much noodles as the wall, we'll find out that there is no correlation of al dente and stickiness. Just like evolution being a religion of death requiring the one mutation to outlive the non-mutations from breading it out of existance again, all noodles that hit the wall and not stick will in-fact stick to the wall given enough dry exposure to air. You see, the top noodles are actually inferior because they were on the top of the mass in the boiling pot of water and thus when taken out of the pot they are the first to dry by dribbling their wetness on the noodles below. Therefore, when with other noodles and thrown at the ceiling they will be the most sticky while the other noodles that didn't stick would prove to be the most apt to improve their resilience to stick because they endured. In short, the noodles that initially stick to the wall the most are inferior to the heavier noodles deeper in the boiling water pot. Making choices on the initial throw is the same as only allowing retards to bread with eachother and only allowing non-retards to bread when they are 80 years-old to increase the likelyhood of more retards.
The next thing we'll hear, is Xavier calling us to save the world.
BEHOLD X-MEN!
After a thousand generations someone's son might breathe fire. He just might.
Oh I wish I could be there.
u can always find someone looks like really u in the other side of the planet
Your remarks indicate you know more than I do on such issues - I wonder if you tend to assign any credibility to J.C. Sanford's musings in his book "Genetic Entropy". Among ID books this one is at least to be praised for its conciseness / lack-of-rambling. Even the most devout blind-watchmaker type must consider the back-of-the-envelope remarks on "How much selection pressure would be needed" to counteract entropy, much less select for the elusive benign mutation. Especially considering the dubious state of selection in Western Civilization. Case-in-point, I've never had the athletic requirements for serious rock-climbing although I enjoy it - it seems that the late "John Bachar" ( nice video on YouTube ) managed to father only one child over his lifetime, surely a quality stud by my metric, anyway.
"Schrodinger's Emperor!"
His clothes are either there or not there, to be known only if you look for them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So, where are my adamantium claws?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"All Scientists Are Mutants, Say Humans"
If mutation were required for speciation, there would be no speciation. The mutation rate is too low.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The number of mutants/km2 in Fort Bend County alone should be enough to convince anyone not on the state Board of Education that mutations are real and ongoing.
so they studied 2 two Chinese men who are distantly related... and form the conclusion that "All Humans Are Mutants!" Something is fishy to me here...
How can they apply to all humans? Sounds me like the best they can come up with is "All Chinese Are Mutants!"
If by genetic modification you mean mutants then every living things has mutated one way or the other, it,s called evolution or something like that!
We arer all anomalies or mutants.
Some more than others though!
says Captain Obvious.
I just go to Wal-Mart.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
We are just products of Yakub?
You're a fool, Charles! Mutants and humans can never live together in peace!
Look at them, they can't even make peace with themselves ...