Did a Genome Copying Mistake Lead To Human Intelligence?

A new study suggests that the sophistication of the human brain may be due to a mistake in cell division long ago. From the article: "A copyediting error appears to be responsible for critical features of the human brain that distinguish us from our closest primate kin, new research finds. When tested out in mice, researchers found this 'error' caused the rodents' brain cells to move into place faster and enabled more connections between brain cells."

Comments

Re:Evolution

[FunkDup]

It's a particlar kind of copy/write error that leads to another process. From TFA:

One type of error is duplication, when the DNA-copying machinery accidentally copies a section of the genome twice. The second copy can be changed in future copies — gaining mutations or losing parts. The researchers scanned the human genome for these duplications, and found that many of them seem to play a role in the developing brain.
[...]
An extra copy of a gene gives evolution something to work with: Like modeling clay, this gene isn't essential like the original copy, so changes can be made to it without damaging the resulting organism.

Re:Evolution

[ideonexus]

I think Richard Dawkins made it okay to use these quasi-anthropomorphic terms to describe processes of evolution when he titled his book "The Selfish Gene," so long as you constantly remind people, as he does laboriously in his text, that genes do not have wants, intentions, or consciously-implemented strategies. It's like saying photons are both a wave and a particle, I've read many physicists who point out that we use the wave-particle duality as a means of conceptualizing something so alien to our macro-reality into something we can understand so the non-expert can enjoy the wonder as well. So too do we attribute all sorts of human concepts to the algorithm of natural selection to make it easier to understand.

Still, your criticism is a valid one and something people need to be reminded that we are talking about inanimate processes.

Something that occurred to me reading the article was that when I saw the term "cell division" I immediately pictured a developing embryo, but that would be a somatic mutation rather than a germinal mutation. It's important to remember that all these evolutionary mutations didn't happen in the animals, they happened in the animals' gametes, the sperm and eggs. A mutation that occurs in the cell division of a developing embryo wouldn't have any affect on the individual's gametes, the mutation had to occur in the sperm or egg first.

Re:Evolution

[camperdave]

"The only "point" of evolution is survival." No, the only point of evolution is successful reproduction.

No, there is no point to evolution. It is simply a side effect of an imperfectly self replicating system (such as amino acid chemistry) in an environment that is non homogeneous.