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

Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt this the whole point of evolution?

Re:Evolution

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Maybe the discovery is the exact mechanism which prompts the rise of higher intelligence? Intelligent animals anyone?

Re:Evolution

[dBLiSS]

Agreed. The use of the word "mistake" implies that there was some sort of intelligence designing the genome and it make a mistake. This just sounds like "random mutation + natural selection = evolution". No need to call it a "mistake"

Re:Evolution

[SJHillman]

The only "point" of evolution is survival. Evolution does not lead towards more intelligent creatures unless intelligence itself better ensures survival. There are many cases of evolution leading to simpler or dumber creatures that have other traits that give them an edge in their environment. It's not a thinking, planning system.

Re:Evolution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is a pretty significant difference between the (well supported but rather vague) hypothesis that human intelligence is the result of some mutation(s) in our evolutionary history and a hypothesis about a specific mutation, of a specific type(there are a number of distinct types of copying errors that tend to occur, and obviously plenty of different locations for them to occur within the genome), with a demonstration that that particular tweak makes for a notable change in the neurons of an animal model...

Re:Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe animals "Uplifted" to human levels of intelligence won't be to far away..?

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

[sourcerror]

I know nobody reads TFA, but at least you could read the summary:

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."

Just because the submitter gave it a stupid title doesn't mean the research was in vain.

Re:Evolution

[Barsteward]

Animals are already at the level of Ted Haggard, Jerry Fullwell, Creationists et al..

Re:Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to miss the point completely.

Re:Evolution

[Savage-Rabbit]

There are many cases of evolution leading to simpler or dumber creatures that have other traits that give them an edge in their environment. It's not a thinking, planning system.

Well.... that explains Sarah Palin and a whole bunch of her friends and followers.

Re:Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh it's not *that* hard to come up with a scenario of some kind, if you really have to believe for some reason.

Some people call these copy errors a "bug", God calls it a "feature". Add a dash of natural selection, and you've got a self-maintaining and self-optimizing system for life to diversify and adapt. None of this having to re-create a whole bunch of things when extinction happens. We're talking low maintenance. The "lazy man's" creation. Like a garden that grows and trims itself. Beautiful really.

But if you mean a scheme where God says *poof* and life is created perfectly all at once, yeah, that's utterly ridiculous. Like believing in a flat Earth or phlogiston.

Re:Evolution

[DThorne]

Actually, there is a pretty good reason to call it a 'mistake'. You get more press.

Re:Evolution

[Pollardito]

It's a mistake because an error was made in the process of transcribing genes between DNA strands. The mechanism failed in its task, no matter whether that mechanism itself was designed or evolved

Re:Evolution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They revoke your journalism license if you don't make at least one egregious and unnecessary error when writing about some scientific happening, particularly if the subject area is emotive and ill-understood by your readership. Extra credit, of course, is awarded if you choose to fuck it up despite having the option of copy-pasting from press material provided by the research group or their affiliated university(s)...

If you look in your handbook of popular science journalism, this rule should be on the same page as the one requiring you to report on any basic research vaguely related to some disease as though it will be showing up in pill form at the ER within a month or two. It's just after the style guide that ensures that all not-yet-fully-settled research areas are described as 'controversial'.

Re:Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead, laugh at and belittle the faith of others. If it makes you feel big, go ahead. Or take a lesson and show respect for others, and instead of laughing at them or belittling them for their faith, why not try to find common ground with them and see how you can work with them to make this world a little better place to live than how it is now? But, that takes more work, doesn't it? It's much more fun to laugh at them for putting their belief into traditions that have held civilizations together for thousands of years.

While I may not share the exact same beliefs as the average Christian, Muslim or Jew, the last thing I will do is to spit on their faith, which is what you just did. For one, it isn't constructive, and for another, it should be beneath any enlightened individual. Besides, I gave up on trying to mold the world into my perfect model years ago, and began accepting the world as it is, and changing it where I can.

Re:Evolution

[AliasMarlowe]

Animals are already at the level of Ted Haggard, Jerry Fallwell, Creationists et al..

Animals without a central nervous system are not bothered by this remark.
Animals with single-digit IQs suspect you've just insulted their intelligence.
Animals with an IQ or 10 or more are certain of it, and they're utterly livid.

Re:Evolution

[icebraining]

A "task" assumes a goal, which is a concept that only makes sense in the context of an intelligent agent. Here, the mechanism just is; an inexact copy is no less valid than an exact copy.

Re:Evolution

[Joce640k]

Alternate headline: Did a Genome Copying Mistake Lead To Arms and Legs in Humans?

Answer: Yes - genome copying mistakes lead to everything in humans.

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

[dyingtolive]

What can I say? I guess I'm bitter and petty for making fun of people who believe the world is 6000 years old, humans just popped into existence, and that things written in a book (by humans) is the mandate of their God. I would have LOVED to find a common ground with them, even as recently as a month or two ago. Tell me where the common ground is when you can't have a discussion including science as a form of evidence, because it refutes what takes place in the bible, and thus you're bad and going to go to Hell for "believing" it. Tell me where the common ground is when you can't have an academic discussion about, say, Job, without them hating you for it. I've tried to understand faith. I've tried to get it myself. I REALLY have. When one is hated because he doesn't happen to share blind faith, then it's hard not to return the favor.

Look at it this way: I'm pretty sure I didn't begin life as a bitter asshole, but I'm there now. What reinforced that behaviour, and why is it directed at the dogmatically religious?

Re:Evolution

[FrootLoops]

The mechanism failed in its task, no matter whether that mechanism itself was designed or evolved

If the mechanism was designed, it was designed to fail sometimes so that humans would result--an intentional failure is not a mistake.
If the mechanism evolved, it evolved to fail sometimes since once in a while those failures are beneficial mutations which is a mechanism that would have already proven its usefulness via natural selection--again this is not a mistake.

The term "mistake" is probably attention-grabbing journalistic crap (the article is titled "Did a Copying Mistake Make Humans So Smart?") since using "mistake" instead of "error" tells a slightly more compelling story with the implication of an anthropomorphic actor doing the copying. The main article text in fact uses "error". Of course the title and subtitle may simply be imprecise. Perhaps they're the result of someone who didn't write the article proper, considering the change in term. The subtitle also has a stylistic difference from the article text--it has no comma or other punctuation. Every sentence of comparable length in the rest of the article (around 15 of them) has a comma, colon, dash, etc., with only one exception, supporting my "someone else wrote the title and subtitle" theory, perhaps someone more interested in page views than providing information.

Re:Evolution

[Ferzerp]

Well, not exactly. Copying mistake suggests a meiosis or mitosis failure. However, there is also the potential for DNA to be altered and then copied accurately.

Re:Evolution

[Jappus]

You seem to have heard that our improved understanding of genetics and other details of inheritance mean that Darwin's ideas have to be flawed because they did not yet contain this understanding; much like Newton's theories were supplanted by Einstein's and his in turn by parts of Quantum Theory.

But this is neither strictly not loosely true. Newton's theories are flawed, because they indeed overlooked an integral property of physical reality. Its formulas simply lead to values that are not correct in our universe. But, and here's the important difference to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection: Darwin never stated any formulas leading to precise predictions. He never explained the principle driving the changes needed by Natural Selection.

What he did was more subtle. He looked at the world and identified the obvious end-result: Species change, compete, cause their predecessors to perish (or change) and then finally perish themselves. Species are not static and unchanging. Instead, each organism is different from the one it sprung forth from. Given enough time, these subtle changes lead to large differences; so large that you'd not immediately see that they are related.

As such, Darwin's point was that Variations, Families, Races and Species are just "grouping terms". They fluidly flow into each other. Small individual changes lead to large cross-species differences.

This point is clearly not flawed. It is quite obviously true, if you look at the historical record and current progress. And that is his entire theory. He never stated what the principle behind the system was, as he could only suspect, not prove. This, he left for later generations. He freely admitted that, if no such system could be found, that his theory would have a huge problem. Thankfully, modern biological sciences has found this principle in all its differentiated glory from genetics, epigenetics, vertical and horizontal inheritance, retro-viral modification, genetic absorption, etc. pp. So instead of not accepting his model, they actually and knowingly vindicated it!

Of course, some of Darwin's larger speculations turned out to be wrong, but these were not the core of his theory of Natural Selection and clearly labeled by him as pretty much unsubstantiated speculation. Just go ahead and read "The Origin of Species" and you will see how careful Darwin was by stating exactly what could break his actual theories' back, which points he though could be proven beyond doubt and which are more doubtful.

So, tl;dr: His theory is actually vindicated by modern science; but it's not the theory of evolution but the theory of natural selection, as these two are quite distinct beasts.

Re:Evolution

[rwhamann]

Sadly, I AM a born again Christian, and have almost the same attitude as you about many of my brothers and sisters. People telling me I'm going to "smart" myself out of the Kingdom and BS like that. I just stopped talking to anyone who believes in Young Earth Creationism at all. I do not understand how people can think that God is the most amazing and intelligent and powerful being in the univers, but is simultaneously afraid of unbiased science.

Re:Evolution

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

I vote for those adorable tiny monkeys!

Only problem is they'd waste that 200 mensa IQ on more accurate and long distance flinging poo devices.

Re:Evolution

[msauve]

"The only "point" of evolution is survival."

No, the only point of evolution is successful reproduction. It makes no difference how long you survive. If your genes aren't passed to offspring, any evolutionary change you may have had dies with you. Likewise, it makes no difference if you die after producing self-sustaining offspring - your contribution to the gene pool carries on.

Re:Evolution

[jbengt]

A "task" assumes a goal, which is a concept that only makes sense in the context of an intelligent agent.

A rather narrow definition. I would say that cell division includes the task of gene replication, e.i.making a copy, even if there is no intelligent agent directing the copying toward a purpose.

Here, the mechanism just is; an inexact copy is no less valid than an exact copy.

Tell that to the parents of a child with cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, or muscular dystrophy.

Re:Evolution

[InsertCleverUsername]

The only "point" of evolution is survival. Evolution does not lead towards more intelligent creatures unless intelligence itself better ensures survival.

Exactly. This is the thing that always puzzles me about many people's pondering of extraterrestrial life. No doubt there's plenty of it out there --nothing about that seems very unlikely, but there doesn't seem to be any overwhelming requirement for sentient intelligence. Look what a good run the dinosaurs had without understanding how to build a fire or use an iPhone. Seems like the best meeting of Drake and Occam, IMHO.

Re:Evolution

[KiloByte]

You don't matter, meatbag. Only your genes do. You're merely a tool used by them to survive. And reproduction proven to be a far better survival strategy than having a single host live forever.

Re:Evolution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A cynical observer noting the noble progress of technology in service of the defense industries might say the same of humans, only dumber and less cute...

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.

Re:Evolution

[Vidar Leathershod]

I talk to YECs all the time. It sounds to me like you are not talking to YECs, though. Sounds like you are actually referring to plain old "stupid" people. There are lots of them, so it's not hard to run into them. People come out with those types of statements regarding your chances of salvation don't even understand their own scriptures. Part of that is because 99.999% of them haven't actually read them. They have absorbed snippets of them over the years, but lack understanding of what information they actually convey. If they did, they would be a lot more scared of making blanket statements like that.

I always find it shocking that people get into such arguments regarding the age of the earth. For the YECs, I don't see how God could care about how old they think the earth is. It's inconsequential. For those who believe that the earth is billions of years old, I don't see how they can take themselves seriously, or care about the result. After all, the number has changed too many times to be of actual interest to anyone (exception below), and it has less than zero bearing on anyone's life. Those who spend untold amounts of time speculating on its age have another agenda. There's where the conflict with YECs comes in.

Since there is nothing to gain from the knowledge itself, the attempt has other motives behind it. First, those who want to "prove" that there is no God, or that if there was one, it certainly isn't the one depicted in the Christian faith. Lots of these people were raised as Catholics or members of other very well organized churches. They were taught from dogma, rather than the Bible. When the dogma failed, their faith was lost (often early) and they feel the need to "liberate" everyone else from the "shackles" of faith. Two, the opportunist looking to get paid for useless research. Some are self-delusional regarding the usefulness of their activity, and come up with all sorts of justifications for being a non-productive member of society. Some are just obsessed hobbyists who have found a way to fund their hobby. Three, the political operative who seeks something to use as leverage against an interest opposed to his or her own. Their lack of faith is not militant, but some other issue puts them at odds with Judeo-Christian groups, such as abortion.

The reaction of some YECs and other religious groups to "unbiased" science is a direct result of some very biased people who try to use very questionable science to undermine the foundations of their faith.

I speak with stupid people of every persuasion all of the time. We all hear them on radio and TV frequently. The trick is to associate with smart people, no matter their opinions. If you try, you will find them. I have talked with very intelligent Jehovah's Witnesses (also dumb ones). I have talked with very intelligent Atheists (also extremely stupid ones). Add Jews, Catholics, Protestants of various denominations, Buddhists, and Muslims, in about the same proportions. The smartest ones have read more of their source materials, and not relied on regurgitation of something someone told them in conversation. This includes the smart Atheists, whose source material can actually be rife with bias. It, like the faith-based material, must be read carefully to see what it says, and what it doesn't, or can't or refuses to say.

As a side note, it is interesting to learn of the many things that are misunderstood by people reading the Bible, due to a lack of cultural context. People aren't aware of underlying issues that existed thousands of years ago in foreign lands. Paul's letters are spectacular for seeing these, as he was dealing with completely different groups of people, and many had very different "problems" in the early Christian Churches.

Re:Evolution

[khallow]

Natural selection handwaved away a lot of genetic specialization

I believe the term for phrases like this is "not even wrong".

Natural selection says nothing about how traits are inherited. It claims rather that there are events or processes in the natural world which winnow organisms and prevent some organisms from passing on their traits to subsequent generations.

You wouldn't expect a theory of natural selection to have much to say about "genetic specialization" or the particular nuts and bolts of how traits are passed on (aside from that the process isn't always successful) any more than you'd expect that theory to say much about how an engine block is put together.

Re:Evolution

[samkass]

"The only "point" of evolution is survival."

No, the only point of evolution is successful reproduction. It makes no difference how long you survive. If your genes aren't passed to offspring, any evolutionary change you may have had dies with you. Likewise, it makes no difference if you die after producing self-sustaining offspring - your contribution to the gene pool carries on.

Not necessarily. If you have no kids, but help other people's kids based on some criteria, you are inserting that criteria into the evolutionary selection pressure. If you take care of your nieces and nephews, you are promulgating kids who share some of your genes even if you don't reproduce. Even if the kids you care for have no genetic similarity, the fact that you were put into a position to care for them may select kids who are in some way similar to you (ie. probably share some genetic patterns). A strong society will likely raise stronger kids who happen to share a disproportionate number of genes with you.

Re:Evolution

[khallow]

His theory is actually vindicated by modern science; but it's not the theory of evolution but the theory of natural selection, as these two are quite distinct beasts.

His theory of evolution is well supported by modern science. Please recall that natural selection is but a third of evolution. We also have copious evidence both of inheritable traits that affect survivability and propagation of that organism's progeny, and variation of those traits over subsequent generations, the two things that need to be added to the theory of natural selection to get the theory of evolution.

Re:Evolution

[MightyMartian]

The only thing Darwin missed was a method of heredibility. That is a flaw, no doubt, but as Stephen R. Gould wrote, the overarching theory still works. The Modern Synthesis is just Darwinian selection married to genetics. In other words, both complement the other.

Re:Evolution

[khallow]

I don't really think that it is appropriate at all to place our (society based) way of thinking onto the natural world, in fact, the way that neo-darwinists conceptualise natural selection algorithmically is very heavily based on the economic theory of Victorian England, and competition is seen as the key driving agent of the whole process.

If only you hadn't provided such a remarkably poor example to illustrate your point. There's a natural and deep synergy between the concepts of evolution and those of economic theory (even of the Victorian era). This goes even to the point that one can apply economic theory to key aspects of the Earth's ecosystem such as parasite communities on a host, pollination, and carrion feeding.

Re:Evolution

[RDW]

The subtitle also has a stylistic difference from the article text--it has no comma or other punctuation. Every sentence of comparable length in the rest of the article (around 15 of them) has a comma, colon, dash, etc., with only one exception, supporting my "someone else wrote the title and subtitle" theory, perhaps someone more interested in page views than providing information.

This is why I love Slashdot - we'd rather spend ages analysing a secondary popular science article to death than talking about the interesting findings of the primary research! The author and/or editor deserve a break for trying to engage the attention of a general audience about a piece of significant work, and succeed in presenting the key points in relatively non-technical language. Both 'mistake' and 'error' are in any case used quite frequently by biologists when discussing mutations - a quick pubmed search will find many examples in the scientific literature (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14616055 - this does not imply that the DNA polymerase is intelligent!).

Speaking of 'mistakes', this research discovered an interesting error in the human genome reference sequence. It turns out that the duplication event was previously obscured by 'mis-assembly' of the closely related copied sequences (the SRGAP2 gene was copied so recently in evolutionary terms that the copies hadn't diverged enough to be easily distinguishable). The researchers did some of their own sequencing using DNA from a 'hydatidiform mole' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydatidiform_mole ), a non-viable pregnancy that only contains genetic material from the father - the lack of confounding allelic variation makes it easier to get clear cut results.

Re:Evolution

[tompaulco]

There you go, down-modded in retribution fueled by christian loveBR> No, downmodded because the GP decided to insult a group of people by comparing them to animals. Do you not suppose that GP would have gotten downmodded if he has made the same remark about black people? Or Mexicans? Or any other group of people?

Re:Evolution

[Prune]

I think that is an important point, and it's not so much intelligence per se, but complexity itself. Single-cell organisms are the pinnacle of evolutionary success on Earth, whether measured by biomass, numbers, adaptability, and spread throughout every environmental niche. They're just complex enough to be alive, and not much more. Intracellular processes are far more optimized than the larger scale functions of multicellular organisms--in many cases, certain cellular processes are provably optimal in terms of energy use. This level of optimization on a multicellular organism probably would take longer than the lifetime of most stars.

Beyond this, once sufficient intelligence appears on some world, technology is almost inevitable if the species continues existence long enough (though I imagine some would disagree). The problem with technology is that it magnifies the fundamental asymmetry between the difficulty of creation and ease of destruction. In our own case it is clear that advanced technology enables an ever smaller group to destroy an ever larger portion of people; in the limit, eventually a single person will be able to destroy all of humanity. Reactive protections against such disaster is always at a significant disadvantage and it only has to fail once for all to be lost. The alternative, pervasive monitoring of every individual at all times without exception also brings issues (I mean beyond the ideological issues of freedom), in that it creates a much more highly integrated social system, and large complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure, as discussed, funny enough, in a slashdot article not long ago. I would be surprised if there is still civilization 500 years from now.

Keep in mind the old argument that galactic colonization is an exponential process, as each colony sends out a ship, the expansion rate grows. Even with each colony sending out ships at a fairly low constant rate, say every 500 years, it only takes a few million years to colonize the whole galaxy. Yet this clearly has not happened, even though intelligence would have to have arisen only once. With the two major factors I listed above, I don't think the first one alone is sufficient to decimate the chance of this happening as much. It's more likely than not that, given the sheer number of planets in the galaxy, intelligence has appeared before on occasion. But couple in the second factor, and the likelihood is that no one has made it far into space.

Re:Evolution

[nashv]

I happen to know one of the authors of the paper, and she was herself rather frustrated about exaggerations and misinterpretations she is seeing of her work in 'journalistic' literature.

She pointed to what she feels is a much more relevant summary of the paper here : http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/05/04/a-duplicated-gene-shaped-human-brain-evolution%E2%80%A6-and-why-the-genome-project-missed-it/

Re:Evolution

[DM9290]

The only thing Darwin missed was a method of heredibility. That is a flaw, no doubt, but as Stephen R. Gould wrote, the overarching theory still works. The Modern Synthesis is just Darwinian selection married to genetics. In other words, both complement the other.

He didn't claim to have found the actual method of inheritability. He didn't miss it, he had no evidence upon which to build a hypothesis and he pointed this out. The word "flaw" is inappropriate. Recognizing the gaps in knowledge that remain after drawing all the conclusions that the evidence suggests, and leaving suggestions to others for future investigation is one of the beauties of science. It is not a flaw.

Re:Evolution

[rainmouse]

It might not be an overwhelming requirement, but it's certainly an overwhelming survival advantage.

Perhaps with huge intelligence gains comes a massive advantage, but clearly small gains are not a survival advantage or animals would be constantly evolving more intelligence in an on-going arms race. It's very likely that the cost of increased intelligence offsets any potential gains.

Re:Evolution

[WastedMeat]

If you are Black or Hispanic, this is a static property of your biology. It will never change. If you are religious, odds are that you inherited it from your parents, but it is still a choice. Not necessarily an easy one if it stems from childhood indoctrination, but it is still a choice, and therefore it's socially acceptable to make fun of it.

It's the same mechanism by which people who choose to be religious justify hating homosexuals.

Re:Evolution

[Immerman]

I think you overlooked a group: those who simply seek to understand the universe. The question of how life in general and we in particular came to exist is a fascinating one, as deserving of research as any other branch. So called "blue sky research", with no obvious benefit has always been a vital component of science. You can learn all sorts of useful things by seeking to understand the mechanisms governing the behavior of things you can meddle with, allowing for all sorts of new technologies, but to discover truly new things you need to explore in directions with no obvious application. That's the world in which theoretical Physicists, theoretical mathematicians, and yes biogenesis researchers exist. These people seek understanding for it's own sake, with no thought of benefit. They are often quite surprised when informed that someone else found an application for their research, often in a field far separated from where their own research was performed. Nevertheless such applications do arise on a semi-regular basis, things that you would never have imagined beforehand, but are incredibly useful once known.

An example: a good while back some scientists were curious as to why energized gasses only emitted light at specific frequencies rather than in a continuous spectrum. Not the sort of thing that has any conceivable application, but it was something they didn't understand and they wanted to. Many scientists dedicated their life to unlocking the mystery, most of them exploring in directions that proved to be dead ends with no relationship to reality, but a few discovered that the spectra lines emerged naturally if you assumed electrons could only absorb or emit energy in specific-sized packets, so called quanta. The idea was absolutely ridiculous, flying in the face of the accepted understanding of physics, but it's predictions worked, and when coupled with similar blue-sky research into cathode rays and black-body radiation it marked the beginning of our understanding of quantum mechanics - the science that underlies the transistor, LED, and solar panel, and which we're still struggling to understand almost a century later.

Re:Evolution

[tompaulco]

Do people choose to be Mexican or black? No. So thanks for proving the GP's point.
If evolutionary theory is to be believed, then you don't have any choice as to whether you will be religious or not, either.

Re:Evolution

[Myopic]

Boy, I've seen that said so many times here today. I'm surprised that Slashdot readers don't know better.

Your understanding of evolution is too elementary. It's more complicated than mutations+selection. The majority of the driving force behind evolutionary change is gene expression. We are starting to understad the enormous implications of epigenetic factors. Actual DNA copying errors are a minority part of what causes evolutionary change, which was the point of this article. It's not that humans are smarter because the smart gener was expressed more often than in monkeys, as previously assumed [afaik], but apparently the smart gener actually mutated. If so, that's news.

Evolution

[uarch]

In other words... Human intelligence is the result of evolution. Shocking. I sure hope there was more to this study that the submitter simply failed to mention...

Isn't that kind of expected?

[YttriumOxide]

Isn't that somewhat the expected process of evolution in general? Genetic mistake happens; proves to actually be useful to reproduction/beating the competition (as opposed to the vast majority that are either useless or detrimental); and then due to being in the most successful breeders, becomes "standard".

Re:Isn't that kind of expected?

[Ardyvee]

Well, it is a mistake in the copy process. Or mutation. Of course, it had been established that those mistakes are, in fact, important and the result of such is called Evolution. Not that we didn't know that already.

Re:Isn't that kind of expected?

[codewarren]

Exactly. I'd like to know what the alternate theory was. Did we think it might have changed on purpose? Science has only just now discovered that we are not the result of an intelligent designer? WTF?

Re:Isn't that kind of expected?

[Rogerborg]

"Science", you say? How science reporting works.

Re:Isn't that kind of expected?

[VortexCortex]

Isn't that somewhat the expected process of evolution in general? Genetic mistake happens; proves to actually be useful to reproduction/beating the competition (as opposed to the vast majority that are either useless or detrimental); and then due to being in the most successful breeders, becomes "standard".

Yet. In fact, the machine learning system I've evolved to recognise speech and images of postures WOULD NOT have been trainable nearly as quickly if I had not EXPLICITLY introduced errors in the genetic copying program. Multiple neural networks compete, they are selected against based on group performance, and the 256 top performers then get to "breed" via genetic program. Zero mutations means that the traits simply shift around in the network, and you can reach an somewhat optimal configuration of the CURRENT intelligence patterns in the system, but to advance (evolve), I MUST pseudo-randomly introduce an error whilst copying from the parents' genomes into the children.

Higher mutation rates cause faster evolution up to a point -- beyond which the chaos overwhelms the genome and you begin to lose valuable traits. I put it to you that only the chemical chains that had an acceptable, but not perfect error rate in their copying system would have evolved into what we call life. It's not that an intelligent designer made a mistake -- It's just that the fault tolerant erroneous copy creating chemical chains are best suited to create life.

Furthermore, when I create a "primordial" simulation of blocks that can link or that can't, and which have various attraction and repulsion properties between them, and randomly distribute them (yes, with quantum RNG hardware), then run the simulation the blocks that form chains and copy themselves ARE THE ONLY patterns that survive -- the non linking blocks get used by the linking ones -- The non copying chains get destroyed by the copying ones or other configurations. The copying chains which have a small error rate, yet keep the general structure of the "parent" pattern end up evolving and out competing those with less optimal error rates.

So, you see: If you have such a primordial pool of chemicals, and any CAN form chains over time they WILL, because that's the simplest (cheapest) structure with sufficient fitness to survive. Additionally the chains of chemicals that copy with errors are the only ones that get more complex over time, and will thus result in life given enough time. There are many things that can go wrong, but if the blocks can link and happen upon a sufficient way to duplicate with error -- You get life.

Were it not for preserving a little of the chaos from which life sprang, life would not evolve.

Re:Brain

[jaminJay]

I think so, Brain, but how are we going to get the monkeys to wear plastic underpants?

Obvious to most

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're with the intelligent designers, it is pretty that all advances made in evolution from the simplest prokaryote to Einstein were made by random errors in gene copying or recombining previous errors.

Re:Obvious to most

[gtall]

Ah, you mean like what happened during the Summer of Love.

Super-intelligent mice?

[gtvr]

How long until they break out & take over the world?

More proof that copying is BAD!

[erroneus]

Sorry, the articles on copyright and intellectual property still have me spinning a little. Something out there was making genome copies which are not legitimate and the result is there for all to see. If people didn't get so smart, there wouldn't be so much copying going on either.

Okay, okay, more on topic. The crowd is already saying "it's evolution." Okay, let's just get this behind us, "DUH!" Okay, that was short for "yes, they are explaining that evolution led to the changes which produced humans and human intelligence. But you are seeing the forest and forgetting to notice the trees. What aspects and details of human evolution have had striking results? One of many answers is this thing that happened which enabled the brain to grow in complexity and power."

Now that said, there are lots more. I think one of the more interesting details is that our eyes show white in the corners so that other people can see what we are looking at. That's huge in terms of human communication. There are lots of things in human evolution which have led us to where we are today. But if one were to go back to a single thing -- a single point of divergence -- it might be the one in the article.

Re:More proof that copying is BAD!

[dutchwhizzman]

Are you telling me that if you copy bad music often enough, it might turn into good music?

Re:More proof that copying is BAD!

[Hogwash McFly]

Imagine if you had somesimple computer-generated music into which random mutations were introduced. These could be presented to listeners who would decide through an online vote the 'fitness' of the new segment over the original. Any mutations deemed favourable could be recombined into the 'genome' of the track. Would it be possible for a basic track to evolve gradually over time into a complex piece of music that sounds better at each stage?

It's Not a Bug...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a feature!
.
.
.
I'll get my coat now...

isn't this the start of a movie plot?

[million_monkeys]

scientist 1: "We figured out the secret to human intelligence!"
scientist 2: "Let try it on those animals in the cage and see if we can make them super smart!"
scientist 1: "Good idea! I can't imagine any scenario where that could go wrong."
scientist 1&2: "Yay!"

in the background:
chimp 1: "Pass me some more smart drink"
chimp 2: "You got it buddy. Once we're smart enough to get this cage open, we are so gonna fuck them up..."

Re:isn't this the start of a movie plot?

[Wild_dog!]

A book too. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nihm. Amazing book as I remember when I was 8.

Re:isn't this the start of a movie plot?

[ImprovOmega]

No, the second movie was a putrefied abortion that should never have been given a shadow of a reflection of a green light. The original movie holds up surprisingly well both in terms of fealty to the book and production quality. I wouldn't say it's the greatest movie ever necessarily, but it was pretty good as such things go.

Tree of Knowledge

[retroworks]

Does this mean we can pinpoint the time and place of Eden, when Adam and Eve bit the apple that led to this cell division?

Re:Tree of Knowledge

[Dcnjoe60]

Does this mean we can pinpoint the time and place of Eden, when Adam and Eve bit the apple that led to this cell division?

Well, using mitochondrial DNA, they have already found that all humans have a common mother some 200,000 years ago. As for the place, most scientist believe it was the eastern part of Africa. Probably not the answer you were looking for, though.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm, part deux

[Wild_dog!]

Perhaps scientists are breeding the next super-race. A few super smart engineered rats get away and bam.... competition with the humans.

Pinky: Brain....

[vawwyakr]

What are we going to do today?

Brain: What we do everyday Pinky.....try to take over the world!!!

Not at all; completely on point

[A nonymous Coward]

Mice and other critters may well have evolved the same mutation many times, but it had no survival benefit without other mutations which only humans (or primates) had.

Human speech, for instance, requires physical changes to vocal cords and the throat, in addition to brain changes, or so I have read. Got to change them all to get actual speech.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[Quiet_Desperation]

Well, there was that incident over at the NIMH.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[Jappus]

Your point is absolutely correct.

But the idea of the parent posting was different. It did not ask whether evolution has a point itself, but instead pointed out that evolution itself is simply the consequence of alterations to successive organisms -- mostly via their genome. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that successive alterations of our genome were responsible for the lion's share of our intelligence.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[dragonsomnolent]

shhhh! it's a secret.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[na1led]

Speech is just a convenient tool that we just happen to have; it could have been some other form of communication. Not every intelligent species in the universe is going to speak.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[MightyYar]

Got to change them all to get actual speech.

And then on the other side of the coin, you have many birds that quite clearly have the required physiology for human-style speech, but haven't evolved the mental faculties.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[MightyYar]

Surely some vocalization would occur, though? Light can't pass through or around objects, so sound has an inherent evolutionary advantage. Of course, there is the whole rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, and I suppose it is possible for some species "out there" to be communicating with part of the spectrum that passes through solid objects.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[mhajicek]

Perhaps they use sign language because predators are too good at following sound. Maybe they communicate with electric charge. Or they could communicate with carefully controlled breaking of wind.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[poly_pusher]

Sorry I just can't resist. You sir are talking out your ass... ;)

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[MightyYar]

Perhaps they use sign language because predators are too good at following sound.

Yeah, I thought of that - but it seems that most critters make sounds anyway. Lightning bugs seem to be an exception, along with some kinds of sea life. And the glowing that they do would obviously (and does!) attract predators. Many animals use elaborate visual displays - mostly for mating. But most of those animals also make sounds. Even rabbits can make sounds.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[StikyPad]

The article isn't about whether evolution happened, but whether the trait known as intelligence was the result of a specific error which created an extra copy of a specific gene. It's the difference between saying "I missed the target," and "I missed the target by 2 inches because of a 6 MPH crosswind as opposed to a misaligned sight,"

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[lister king of smeg]

dr who comic relief episode with Rowan Atkinson as the dr featured that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[Immerman]

True, however using light as a non-line-of-sight communication medium requires that you overcome the considerable "background noise" generated by the local star. That could mean being strictly nocturnal or subterranean, generating a *massively* intense light source, or developing *extremely* good visual detection and interpretation of slight variations in light. I see all those, with the possible exception of the last, having some serious drawbacks on the timescales that would likely be involved in evolving from crude signaling to sophisticated communication.

Line-of-sight communication on the other hand could be very effective - take Cuttlefish as an example, they appear to have at least a rudimentary form of communication conveyed through rapidly animated patterns displayed on their skins, things resembling the "plasma" graphical demos of old, truly incredible to behold. I tried to find a video of it but all I could find was the more common camouflage and static pattern signaling behaviors. Given a sentient mind behind it I imagine the bandwidth of such a communication method could be truly staggering. Supplemented with sound for crude signalling without line-of-sight and you'd have the makings of an incredible communication medium.

Oh, and I'm assuming sound would still be involved because:
* Sound detection is essentially an advanced form of touch, so some form is likely to evolve relatively "cheaply".
* It's pretty much impossible to move without making sound, so the ability to detect sound is likely to have strong survival advantages regardless of whether you're predator or prey.
* Sound propagates well in cluttered environments due to how easily the waves can be reflected and bent around objects. (also great in liquid or solid environments, where sound propagates much more readily)

Given those factors it seems likely that any sentient species would latch on to it as an excellent supplementary form of communication. Even if they don't have organs designed to produce sound they would likely figure out a way to clap, stomp, bang sticks together, etc. to signal each other when out of sight.

Oh, and actually sound passes *through* most objects extremely well, air is probably one of the *least* sound-friendly mediums, the catch is that it tends to be mostly reflected at the boundary between things of very different density, like say air and pretty much anything else. Even then a sizable amount will still make the jump. Sound-proofing materials tend to to be highly porous and/or flexible to maximize the number of sound-solid transitions (and thus internal reflections), while also converting as much sound as possible to heat.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[Myopic]

Ding, ding, winner. The most common form of DNA change is gene expression, which has been the leading theory for the evolution of intelligence.

Re:Not at all; completely on point

[Pseudonym]

Not really. The article is emphasizing that a "mistake" is what lead to human intelligence. ALL changes to the genome are "mistakes", it's not some exciting new concept.

To look at it another way, the copying system can't be too perfect in a given species, because it will mean that evolution doesn't happen. If your species completely eliminates mutations, you will be outcompeted by a species which retains the capacity to adapt.

Words like "mistake", when applied to biological processes, are highly misleading. It reinforces the same folk teleology which leads second-rate science journalists to report that trait X evolved in order to accomplish goal Y, as if there was some kind of... oh, I don't know... intelligent agent guiding the process who had something specific in mind.

The use of the word "mistake" (without the scare quotes, which I note that you correctly put in) inaccurately implies a value judgment that keeping copying 100% perfect was the intention. Words like "mistake" or "error" do not accurately describe any known natural phenomenon, in biology or any other field of the natural sciences. Social science, yes. Political science, yes. Computer science, yes. Biology, no.

Uplift

[LWATCDR]

Hurry we need to get to work on Chimps and Fins so when the Galactics show up we will already be patrons.

I've always wondered why we're so "smart"

[Rooked_One]

There isn't a need for it. Look at the fossil records of anything that was around for 100+ million years. You *hardly* need intelligence to survive.

Not to mention we have no natural predators besides viruses, which allows us to reproduce very unnaturally, and starts to favor very strange traits - traits that don't benefit the species but work because we have modern conveniences such as electricity, indoor lighting, cooling, heating, etc.

Re:I've always wondered why we're so "smart"

[O('_')O_Bush]

What is so curious to me is that terrestrial life basically had a reset 65 million years ago to a state hundreds of millions of years ago, just with substitution of small, rodentlike mammals instead of small mammal-like reptiles or small dinosaurs.

I would have expected the intelligence specialty to have appeared before now, possible to greater extent, barring some biological reason preventing reptiles or dinosaurs from having complex abstract thinking.

Headline fail

[saveferrousoxide]

FTFA: We may have been looking at the wrong types of mutations to explain human and great ape differences

The article isn't about whether it was a mutation, it's about identifying the specific mutation that put us down this path.

Re:So how long was Slashdot Down?

[stoolpigeon]

It's still down for me.

Flowers for Algernon?

[JerkBoB]

Nearly 90 posts, and no Flowers for Algernon reference yet? Illiterate bastards.

Re:Serious Question...

[FreedomOfThought]

Since I do not understand these 'disorders', I did not want to name off any specific types and make myself seem too foolish... But yes, that would be one ;)

Re:Purpose of Life

[GargamelSpaceman]

Ok, notwithstanding the number 42, and ignoring the more popular question 'What is the meaning of life?' ( which by the way has been long settled with the answer to be found in any dictionary under the entry for 'life' ), it seems that it might be interesting to consider 'What is the purpose of life?' since evolution pertains mostly to life here on Earth.

I'll venture that the purpose of life seems to me to be responsible for creating the most entropy possible. The prevalent M.O. seems to be for life to extract the Gibbs Free Energy from the environs to produce offspring, and then to die. By dying, one creates disorder, which is the purpose of life. However, by first creating offspring, the life form is responsible not only for the entropy directly created by it's own demise but indirectly for the disorder created by any offspring and their offspring. Use Gibbs Free Energy to Copy then Die.

Is there another strategy for producing entropy that could be more successful than life?

It would seem not, though I don't know for sure. Evolution has produced many variations on the theme, suited to different niches, but life seems to stick to this general gameplan.

Good point

[Benfea]

People tend to forget that evolution happens at the population level, not at the individual level. Otherwise, social species would never have evolved.