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Study: An Evolutionary "Arms Race" Shaped the Human Genome
An anonymous reader writes "An evolutionary race between rival elements within the genomes of primates drove the evolution of complex regulatory networks that orchestrate the activity of genes in every cell of our bodies, reveals new research. The race was between mobile DNA sequences known as 'retrotransposons' (jumping genes) and the genes that have evolved to control them. Scientists at the University of California Santa Cruz, identified genes in humans that make repressor proteins to shut down specific jumping genes. "We have basically the same 20,000 protein-coding genes as a frog, yet our genome is much more complicated, with more layers of gene regulation. This study helps explain how that came about," said Sofie Salama, a research associate at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute who led the study."
Per topic, when pushing rapidly into a new niche, doing the new X a little better than everyone else expanding there makes you the top dog. Once a new option becomes available, it seems natural that evolutionary pressure would push towards exemplifying that niche in a short timespan. That's the whole idea behind punctuated equilibrium as a theory.
That's not to discredit the amazing work these scientists have done to deduce the mechanics of how that might have happened to early humans.
Mokyu Mokyu~~~~~~~~~
...all she was doing was imparting some of her reprocessor genes to him, thus causing blocking of the proper jumping genes, to turn him human?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Hey guys, I just made an incredible scientific discovery about human DNA! Let's focus 50% of our resources only on bullshitting up a fairytale about how it made us become superanimals one million years ago instead of using this shit to work out new medicines, gene therapies, or practical applications! Making up historical fan fiction gets us out of Sunday School, so instead of finding out the "why/how did this REALLY happen?" let's just say "Evolution did it!" and call it a day!
But, please, no, instead of studying actual, applicable biology, spend more time telling me the statistical non-impossibilities of how some male with a slight improvement in every possible cellular microorganism happens to be born every generation and ends up breeding with every single female of the species, on the entire planet. I'm really listening.
Just look at Africa. Look at the average African IQ - 70.
Let's just allow millions of them to move into every white country on Earth, after all, it would be 'racist' not to, and we all know a 'diverse' society is better than a - shock horror - all WHITE one, right? The T.V. said so, so it must be true.
In fact, since a 'diverse' society is so wonderful, we should punish all the 'racist' whites by forcing them to live with ONLY THEIR OWN KIND. That would be just awful for them, wouldn't it, they'd be missing out on all that wonderful 'diversity'...
The title doesn't cover the interesting part of this research. The "Arms Race" it talks about isn't an arms race with genes from other groups of people. It's basically a competition within the genome itself. These retrotransposons are genes that would basically make copies of themselves all around our genomes (likely to our detriment) if there wasn't another set of genes that suppressed that activity. To use a metaphor I've seen elsewhere, the regulator genes are basically like cops that beat the street looking for criminals in the genome. The retrotransposons then evolve in response to that with ways to mask their presence from the regulator genes. This arms race happens without much in the way of any benefit for the meat body host.
I haven't read TFS, only TF Title, but how can be the theory of evolution be "new research"?
You americans are really weird.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know that since this is Slashdot, evolution = good, arms race = bad, so I don't know how to process the headline.
Dark Reflection
I think you're overlooking the root problem here. Science isn't geared toward to correct keywords that generate the articles that you'd like to read. From now on, we should rename "evolution" to "Kim Kardashian," "Mars" to "school shooting," and "SQL" to "Top Ten List."
absolutely -- everything is in the race. It's like suggesting more complex beings (e.g. humans) are "more evolved", when in fact they (we) were pushed out of the simpler niches by "better evolved" organisms. There's virus that uses 5 of the 6 available reading frames along a stretch of its genome... THAT is good coding (humans use 1, very rarely 2, and often none (non-protein coding)).
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
The title doesn't cover the interesting part of this research. The "Arms Race" it talks about isn't an arms race with genes from other groups of people. It's basically a competition within the genome itself.
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... has been a standard perspective in biology for decades.
running it. Any real experiments or is this just a bunch of PhD jerk offs dry labing stuff they really don't understand?
my roomate's aunt makes $88 an hour on the laptop . She has been out of a job for 10 months but last month her payment was $21559 just working on the laptop for a few hours. learn this here now ....
http://www.wikiwages.com/
This is no big surprise. All the mammals have surprisingly similar DNA.
We are some batshit crazy monk...
Ooook!
Scary is what's going to happen when someone takes an ~100% accurate readout of the human genome (i.e. good enough to recreate the DNA using the readout), sits down with a computer and gene database, deletes the non-coding junk, these retrotransposons, the old virus genomes that thought they'd acheived immortality and a bunch of other stuff we think is crap, generates the genes and IVF myself an embryo with this "cleaned-up" genome.
What happens if your genome has no redundant crap (and at this point extended telometeres because why the heck not)? Forget engineering "superior" genes, let's just get rid of all the NOOPs our cells execute first and see what happens.
And what if the kid heals twice as fast as the rest of us, has a genius IQ, and lives to 150?
> non-coding junk
> stuff we think is crap
> redundant crap
> NOOPs
Yours is an antiquated view. What used to be called junk DNA is actually the most interesting part, because we haven't figured out what it does.