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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
And here we have scientific evidence that human mutation is working as Designed.
Weird, I'm suddenly craving a bowl of spaghetti.
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
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...
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....
No. You don't. The certainty of the inference is just low. This is a fine start, and new data will be added as genetic sequencing becomes cheaper.
After all, I am strangely colored.
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.
I seem to remember them saying that the mutations come from the father, how women are mutants I don't know.
I have shocking news for you, you may want to have a seat: women have fathers, just like men. Disturbing, I know.
In other words, the X evolves faster than the Y, and as men only get one X, anything on a single X becomes FAR more important to the men then it is to the women. It is only things that are on BOTH X chromosomes that are important to women.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
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.
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.