Humans' Big Brains Linked To a Small Stretch of DNA

A new study (abstract) described in the L.A. Times suggests that "just 10 differences on one particular strand of human DNA lying near a brain-development gene could have been instrumental in the explosive growth in the human neocortex." The DNA region, containing just 1,200 base pairs, is not a gene. But it lies near one that is known to affect early development of the human neocortex, according to the study, published online Thursday in Current Biology. Researchers showed that the region, known as HARE5, acts as an enhancer of the gene FZD8. Embryos of mice altered with human HARE5 developed significantly larger brains and more neurons compared with embryos carrying the chimp version, according to the study.

Comments

Look around you

[invictusvoyd]

Facebook , whatsapp .. HARE5 is certainly mutating .. some of the recent human DNA will make mice with smaller heads .. The world is going to be dumb eventually ..The dumb people make more babies .. The smart ones are still workin on that thesis they have to finish.

Re:Look around you

[GloomE]

I was going to moderate this.
But then I couldn't work out if it thought it mostly Flamebait, Troll, Redundant, Insightful, Interesting, Informative or Funny.

Re:Look around you

[sound vision]

There are plenty of smart people who have never had to do a "thesis", if you mean a project to cap off a university degree. Conversely, there are plenty of dumb people who have degrees. That number is only going up from grade inflation and degree devaluation as the idea that everyone needs to go to college permeates deeper into society. An idea fed, in part, by comments like yours.

Re:Look around you

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is going to be dumb eventually ..The dumb people make more babies .. The smart ones are still workin on that thesis they have to finish.

There is no one more dumb than the ones thinking they are smarter than the rest.
The truth is : nearly everyone is capable of doing smart things or dumb things, and at one point or another, they do.

Re:Look around you

[earthminion]

@GloomE, the poster you refer to (invictusvoyd) was paraphrasing the film Idiocracy ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

As your understanding of the genome increases, I wonder if sooner or later, someone is going to try gene therapy to hit HARE5 to try to boost it more? ... or at least find a way to improve on what nature has so far achieved. That's an upgrade most of us would want. If we could make the entire human race smarter, we could solve a lot of problems in the world.

Re:Look around you

[earthminion]

@myself, "As your understanding of the genome increases" ... DOHH... I ment "our" not "your" ... typo ... not awake yet .... need some coffee or a HARE5 upgrade.

Re:Look around you

[invictusvoyd]

Well I used the word thesis but not exactly in the university context.. It could be that project or that code or that painting or that whatever ..

Re:Look around you

[TheRaven64]

The current size of the human head is limited by the pelvic size of women (humans already have a fairly high rate of mortality among newborns and mothers for unaided births compared to other species as a result). A more interesting approach would be to delay the age at which the head stops growing, though that would also need extra skeletal scaffolding to carry the larger head around, improvements to the cardiopulmonary system to keep it supplied with blood, and so on. Basically, the human brain is about as big as you can get it with small incremental changes to a hominid - you're going to need more than a few tweaks to get it a lot bigger.

Oh, and this isn't Twitter. You don't need to say '@GloomE' - we can tell from the fact that you replied to his post that you replied to his post.

Re:Look around you

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no one more dumb than the ones thinking they are smarter than the rest.
The truth is : nearly everyone is capable of doing smart things or dumb things, and at one point or another, they do.

What a crock of shit.

You are one of the stupid ones, in case you were wondering.

Re:Look around you

[Anonymous Coward]

If you make the brain bigger without an increase in skull size bad things can happen....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold%E2%80%93Chiari_malformation
Personally, I think the emotional problems associated with 3+ standard deviation above-average IQ have failed to create an evolutionary incentive for women's pelvis size to have any need to allow for larger heads. The inevitable existential crisis is enough of a ceiling on intellect without any sort of volumetric constraint.

Re: Look around you

[rkcth]

While I slightly disagree with his comment, I think it just needs to be phrased differently. When we say "smart" we may mean depth of knowledge in one or more subjects, or able to grasp new things quickly, but there is a much greater diversity in useful intellect. My father is not what most people would call "smart", he's not great at learning new things, has a below average grasp of math, doesn't read or enrich his mind, etc. yet he can look at a problem in the real world and find a solution to it in a few moments. He can't always articulate it well to others, but it's astonishing to see. He will often build something with 1 person as efficiently as 2, because he comes up with contraptions for anything you'd need another person for. He rarely uses brawn, he uses simple machines, jigs and more. He's so much smarter than I am in those areas. I can sit down and read a book on a subject and remember everything I read, and often be able to do that thing immediately afterwards. I bought books with all my income growing up, I taught myself programming and started a software company, but I will never be as good as my father at seeing a problem and solving it rapidly without the help of others and without the use of costly devices. He's "smarter" than me in that area. If IQ tests tested for that he'd be in the top 1%, Id be in the bottom 10%. There are many gifts we all have and devaluing others gifts, because they differ from our own by calling them dumb, shows just how much more you need to grow.

Re:Look around you

[drinkypoo]

A more interesting approach would be to delay the age at which the head stops growing, though that would also need extra skeletal scaffolding to carry the larger head around, improvements to the cardiopulmonary system to keep it supplied with blood, and so on. Basically, the human brain is about as big as you can get it with small incremental changes to a hominid

...and those small incremental changes are ongoing to make us larger overall, setbacks due to inadequate nutrition aside. A larger human can support a larger brain...

Re: Look around you

[iluvcapra]

This proposal, of course, works from the assumption that you can get marginal gains in intelligence from marginal increases is brain mass, which I'm pretty sure hasn't been established empirically.

Re:Look around you

[ZorglubZ]

The current size of the human head is limited by the pelvic size of women

This is incorrect, the reason human babies aren't more developed at birth is because the energy required to continue development is larger than the energy the mother's body can produce. Unfortunately, my google-fu seems to be faulty; I can't find the BBC documentary where this was shown...

Re:Look around you

[Hussman32]

I'm assuming you weren't intentionally copying the premise of Idiocracy.

Re: Look around you

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is exactly what I meant when I wrote #49104257.

When I look around, I see a lot of intellectual people who are terribly smug about knowing difficult things from narrow fields.

But widen your view, and you'll notice other people, of the less-to-none intellectual kind, whom at first sight seem dumb because they can't be bothered to remember even basic scientific facts, or learn basic math, or read books.

And then you keep looking, and see them do amazing things. Artists drawing things you can't even imagine in your head, mechanics taking apart a new model engine block and putting it back together first time right with some improvements, carpenters building fantastic constructions based on some pencil figures on a piece of paper. Creative intelligence instead of IQ.

People don't appreciate that even individuals with an IQ of 50, who we label as "retarded", are still much smarter than the smartest apes. And a lot of times they will amaze you by doing something you'd never thought them capable of. That's also true for the apes btw.

For me, "dumb" is just a label that closed-minded people apply to other people, so they can feel superior. Which seems to be fundamental to the human psyche : we need to be better than other people. It's our base drive to compete. I think this might also explain greed : possessing more resources is one way to be better than the rest.

Re:Look around you

[nightsky30]

Idiocracy

Re:Look around you

[Crudely_Indecent]

This is perfectly illustrated and explained in the first 5 minutes of the movie "Idiocracy"

Re: Look around you

[SgtAaron]

or me, "dumb" is just a label that closed-minded people apply to other people, so they can feel superior. Which seems to be fundamental to the human psyche : we need to be better than other people. It's our base drive to compete. I think this might also explain greed : possessing more resources is one way to be better than the rest.

My opinion: dumb people are those that have no idea how ignorant they are about a great many things. I don't think that opinion is new at all :-)

Re: Look around you

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually cranial size and intelligence has been proven to be linked statistically speaking larger head correlates with higher IQ,
BUT it's also show that people with smaller heads can have extra-ordinarily high IQ and their brains work differently, they do better self optimizations and its been show in MRI-scans.

So gains in brain mass isn't the only way :D

Re:Look around you

[tinkerton]

I think the genes responsible for 'bigger' and 'more' generally don't take up more space, much less than 'restructure to do the same in a brain half the size'. Probably we've taken a very wasteful approach to getting smarter in terms of er, brain real estate.

Re:Look around you

[Kyont]

The current size of the human head is limited by the pelvic size of women

"I like big butts and I cannot lie." It's not just a preference, it's an evolutionary advantage!

I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like such a simple thing. But if it was evolution alone, other species would have it too. It looks like there is more than just evolution at play.

Re:I.D.

[invictusvoyd]

Other species have what we donot . A tiger can decapitate a human with a single strike of the claw ( ~= 300kg force) , a shark can smell a drop of blood from 10 kms away ( ~= 60% of the brain dedicated to olfactory processing) .. Thats where their evolutionary "currency" was spent . It's like while they were building a supermassive electronic typewriter, we invented the computer.

Re:I.D.

[itzly]

Thats where their evolutionary "currency" was spent

The currency is the food needed to grow the tissue and support it. Evolution itself doesn't cost anything.

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that follow? Trees have leaves, so should do I? I don't, therefore I.D.?

What the hell? Cats make their own vitamin C. Explain that!

Re:I.D.

[itzly]

But if it was evolution alone, other species would have it too

You assume that bigger brains offer a net benefit to other species. The problem is that large brains consume a large amount of energy. If the extra intelligence doesn't help to acquire extra food, the bigger brain is not a asset. Also, acquiring food is only part of the equation. Animals must also be able to actually eat and digest it. An animal like a cow already spends every waking moment on eating and digesting. Even if bigger brain could help it find more grass, there's still not enough time to actually process enough of it.

Re:I.D.

[Dutch Gun]

Intelligence can do far more than gather food more effectively. Less intelligent critters are plenty good at that as well. Early proto-humans probably had some other advantages, such as the ability to adapt to changing conditions, or to create tools useful for weapons or defense, all thanks to bigger brains. Intelligence is really the ultimate utility trait, because it allows for better adaptation that might cause other animals to simply die out. Look at how successfully early humans survived all over the globe, in almost every climate, even without dramatic physical alterations - only minor differences, such as eye shape, skin pigmentation, etc.

That being said, the other advantage we have is the evolutionary path that allowed us better use of those big brains, such as the ability to walk upright and opposable thumbs on very dexterous hands. As such, we can more easily shape the world to our advantage through sophisticated tools. Without the proper bodies to manipulate the world around them, intelligence would do a creature far less good. Improved intelligence may have been tried before, but it may not have been worth the increased nutritional demands without the correct body to take advantage of it.

Re:I.D.

[fyngyrz]

Don't feed the trolls. Especially the cray-cray trolls.

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like while they were building a supermassive electronic typewriter, we invented the computer.

Tell me more, about these Sharks with Electronic Typewriters that you speak of.

Re:I.D.

[itzly]

Intelligence can do far more than gather food more effectively. Less intelligent critters are plenty good at that as well

The point is that they need to "pay" for their bigger brain by eating more food. And for a creature with a small body, it means a a lot more food. So, it doesn't matter what nice things intelligence can do for a creature, if it can't afford the energy for it.

Re:I.D.

[Dutch Gun]

Well, yeah, I'm not really disagreeing with you regarding that. I'm aware that it's an extremely expensive organ in terms of nutrient consumption. I was just pointing out that intelligence offers more benefits than increased food gathering capabilities.

Interestingly, you talk about the need eat a lot of food. Our human brain actually allows us a richer diet by giving us the intelligence to cook our food. That makes it easier for us to digest meat, which in turn makes us more efficient predators. I've read that some researches believe cooking our food enabled us to eventually evolve smaller guts, which allowed that extra nutrition to go towards enhancing our brains instead.

Food for thought, one might say?

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very superficial view. The amount of change that could be expressed over a generation is limited and it is further limited because each intervening generation needs to be viable - so each step should need to show an evolutionary advantage in its own right. If your line has already diverged to the point that a change in another species would require getting over a generational pessima it isn't going to happen.

So the notion of an evolutionary budget from a species current state makes perfect sense.

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Assuming we had to cook food first before smaller guts evolved - we were paying additional energy expenditure for many generations.

Re:I.D.

[itzly]

Still, many things can happen in parallel. A tiger could have evolved to have bigger muscles, and a bigger brain at the same time.

Re:I.D.

[itzly]

Yes, there's a theory that humans cooking their food was a big enabler for their bigger brains, because the cooking process makes it a lot easier to digest the food and absorb more of the nutrients in a short time. But the ability to cook the food depends on a lot more than being intelligent. You also need the body that allows manipulation of tools so you can carry the fire wood, start a fire and control it, and carry the food to the fire. That's something that our bipedal humanoid ancestors could do well, but most other animals would not be able to pull off, even if they were a little bit smarter.

Re:I.D.

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye,

Some dogs can understand over 200 words. And dolphin which are predatory creatures are very intelligent and are close to the weight of tigers (200kg vs 225kg for largest).

The long term bacterial experiment also shows that many mutations occur constantly which have no immediate effect. As long as they are not detrimental, they get carried along. For example- humans average 67 mutations compared to their parents.

Combinations of these benign "noise" mutations separated by thousands of generations in the bacteria resulted in dramatic abilities (such as the ability to consume previously inedible substances).

Re:I.D.

[Hognoxious]

A tiger can decapitate a human with a single strike of the claw ( ~= 300kg force)

Maybe, but I bet it doesn't know what a newton is.

Re:I.D.

[Livius]

But if it was evolution alone, other species would have it too.

Evolutionary innovations don't work like that. There's a species that's first. It might not keep the monopoly for long, but humans haven't been around for long.

Re: I.D.

[bazmonkey]

It should also be considered that for many animals, a gradual increase in intelligence and brain mass isn't much of an advantage. What would a smart cow do differently? Would a mouse be able to use tools even if it knew how to make them? Even apes smart enough to use many tools can't do so effectively because they simply lack the fine motor skills to execute. I would argue that it was not until our ancestors were 1) standing with two very dexterous spare limbs to play with, and 2) out of our natural environment where there isn't food a-plenty, that even small increases in intelligence was a big advantage. We needed to hunt (communicate and coordinate), and we had the dexterity and capability to carry items over distance that made intelligence worthwhile.

Re: I.D.

[bazmonkey]

It should also be considered that for many animals, a gradual increase in intelligence and brain mass isn't much of an advantage. What would a smart cow do differently? I would argue that it was not until our ancestors were 1) standing with two very dexterous spare limbs to play with, and 2) out of our natural environment where there isn't food a-plenty, that even small increases in intelligence was a big advantage. We needed to hunt (communicate and coordinate), and we had the dexterity and capability to carry items over distance that made intelligence worthwhile.

Re:I.D.

[wisnoskij]

Lol. Just lol. You obviously have not put much thought into this. If you had bothered to get up and look around you would have found that all of the long lasting species have incredibly small brains. Brains are far too demanding of vast quantities of meat, and cause too many natal problems to survive any significant changing conditions.

Look at how successfully early humans survived all over the globe, in almost every climate

Yes along side thousands of other species that are even more widely dispersed and which have been at the game of survival thousands (in some cases billions) of times longer. Come talk to me after humans has surpassed the average mammalian species lifespan (although, at that point the dodo will still have them beat).

Re:I.D.

[Ol Olsoc]

An animal like a cow already spends every waking moment on eating and digesting.

And farting. So many farts.

Re:I.D.

[Ol Olsoc]

Well, yeah, I'm not really disagreeing with you regarding that. I'm aware that it's an extremely expensive organ in terms of nutrient consumption. I was just pointing out that intelligence offers more benefits than increased food gathering capabilities.

It's one metric. But it seems like a "humans are the apex of creation" outlook after a while.

Our intelligence is pretty impressive, but it is just one metric. Some species achieve remarkable success via massive overproduction, some through aggression (more on that) some through specialization.

And is success measured by weight, aplha predation, or intelligence? THere are even honorable mentions for highly adapted senses.

Humans have the intelligence, and the ability to do somkething about it, with our manipulative hands.

But we also have some aggressive traits that might end up placing us right on top of the unsuccessful species list. Much of our ability is tuned to killing each other.

Re: I.D.

[BarbaraHudson]

What would a smart cow do differently?

Not double-post? :-)

Animals are better at communicating when it comes to predator/prey than humans are. They can detect us further away, and flee en masse, same as birds flocking. Or if you're a herd of elephants, just form a circle with heads out and say the equivalent of "do you really want a piece of this"? For most of our human's existence, we were scavengers, same as the vulture and the hyena, because we couldn't compete.

Any group of humans that got too large to be sustained in it's area would end up attacking each other. If the group was too large, the energy spent continuously going to new foraging grounds would be more than the return, so again, they would turn on each other. Yes, I mean Donner Party style. We still see indications of this today, because humans are more aggressive towards each other than towards other animals. It's a survival trait, because the existence of too many humans in one group until recently always meant starvation.

Re:I.D.

[drinkypoo]

Currency is a pretty appropriate word to use since a mutation which produces an adaptation which might be useful in that it permits success in a new niche might decrease success in the present one. Time to go...

Re:I.D.

[drinkypoo]

Being able to put on other animals' skins and dance around is probably a big part of it. Getting fire figured out will have been a trial-and-error-prone process.

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...so each step should need to show an evolutionary advantage in its own right."

Each time a mutation happens all it really needs to not do is be fatal to the organism or screw it up badly. Every human on the planet is a mutant and a large proportion of those mutations get passed on to the next generation. Not all mutations are going to be useful, the majority are going to have no effect whatsoever.

Re:I.D.

[Dutch Gun]

I don't believe I declared that humans are the "apex of creation", nor even declared them to the most successful, depending on how you define that. I was just pointing out some advantages of our physiology that's led to our current evolutionary success - meaning we've survived so far as a species. Of course, past success does not guarantee future performance.

By other metrics, such as evolutionary diversity, I might choose ants or arachnids. Maybe simple shrimp species that haven't changed much in 200 million years for longevity. For evolved senses and specialty equipment, perhaps sharks (some of whom are also amazingly old too).

Incidentally, the fact that we kill each other is hardly unique to humans, and doesn't seem a detriment to survival. Ants, spiders, and sharks all kill each other as well. The only thing that makes it dangerous as a species is our most advanced weapons. Even then, it's actually debatable whether we could actually exterminate ourselves via nuclear weapons in a worst case scenario. Recent studies suggest that the effects of nuclear winter, while obviously catastrophic to civilization and mass populations, would not actually end all human life.

Re:I.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution needs reproduction and reproduction costs lives even today for females...

Re: I.D.

[tinkerton]

Intelligence is a plus if the species is opportunistic and social. Like for instance raptors. Standing on rear legs opens opportunities - indicating that it increases chances for opportunistic strategies to outweigh the extra braincost.

Are you prepared?

[Anonymous Coward]

The future will be genetically engineered. Artificial intelligence will be a grafting of human neurons to follow algorithmic pattens.

What does this mean for lesser human beings, in a world where animals are slaughtered without so much as a care to allow them to turn around in gestation crates.

Re: Are you prepared?

[Alwin Henseler]

What does this mean for lesser human beings, in a world where animals are slaughtered without so much as a care to allow them to turn around in gestation crates.

Well we already have zoos, chicken farms, etc. No reason a few humans wouldn't fit in there. ;-)

The next phase of research...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very intriguing and all but scientists really need to move on the next stage of research where they try to identify the part of /. editors DNA that causes the explosive growth of dupe articles.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/02/19/1743209/human-dna-enlarges-mouse-brains

life imitates art

[Anonymous Coward]

next time on Pinky & the Brain...

Re:life imitates art

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks. i was afraid this link would be missed.

Re:life imitates art

[Noah Haders]

what do you want to do tonight? the same thing we do every night -- try to take over the world!

Re:Frist Psot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I got First Post because of my big brain!!!! Yippppeeeeeee!!!

ironic that an article about human brain size has a yipppeeeee first post.

mice, HGTTG

[swell]

If we learned anything from The Hitchhiker's Guide, it is that the mice are the supreme species on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
What's the point of injecting inferior genes into their brains?

On a more serious note, it will probably be a long time before genetic science can safely determine the source of intelligence or any way to manipulate it. And a long time beyond that to overcome social and legal impediments to using the knowledge in any practical way. Expect to be just as dumb as you are for the rest of your life.

Re:mice, HGTTG

[invictusvoyd]

If we learned anything from The Hitchhiker's Guide, it is that humans have a very capable imagination

_____________
reesistance is futile

Re:mice, HGTTG

[Evtim]

We also learned:

- That we should never trust marketing. GPP feature, anyone? Share and enjoy? [+5 Funny]
- That if life is to survive in a Universe this size the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion [+5 Insightful]
- That galactic banks are a figment of our imagination [+5 Informative]
- That with a degree in math and another in astrophysics it is either this or the unemployment agency on Monday morning [+5 Informative]
- That cricket is evil [+5 Funny]
- That isolationism is bad. "It has to go" --> Krikkiters about the Universe, after discovering they are not alone [+5 Insightful]
- That it is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem [+5 Informative]
- That the one thing a bunch of respectable physicists cannot stand is a smart ass [+5 Funny]
- That the best way to break ice at parties is the finite probability generator [+5 Informative]
- That personally offending everyone in the Galaxy is a huge task, even for an immortal [+5 Informative]
- That prophets always come back, even if it is just a few seconds before the end of the Universe [+5 Funny]
- The the wheel is not commercially viable, mostly because of its color [+5 Funny]
- That the most effective devaluation financial program is to cut down the forest [+5 Insightful]
- That the best way to avoid tax is the afterlife [+5 Informative]
- That cauliflower has special opinion about food that does not want to be eaten [+5 Informative]
- That the function of a president is not to yield power, but to divert the attention from those that do [+5000 Informative]

This just from the top of my head. DNA found novel, fascinating and very funny WAY to say the truth. I mean, just for an illustration, the whole story of the total perspective vortex, its creation, effects, usage and the fate of ZB when he is subjected to it --> yes, this is the one and only way, IMO, to deal with the size of the Universe. Both humble and proud. With and without sense of proportion. There is a very healthy portion of real wisdom in those books, just like every good book I suspect.....

Re:mice, HGTTG

[penguinoid]

On a more serious note, it will probably be a long time before genetic science can safely determine the source of intelligence or any way to manipulate it.

Oh but it won't be so long once we genetically modify ourselves to be intelligent enough to understand those genetics.

Re:mice, HGTTG

[Anonymous Coward]

We also learned:

- That we should never trust marketing. GPP feature, anyone? Share and enjoy? [+5 Funny]
- That if life is to survive in a Universe this size the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion [+5 Insightful]
- That galactic banks are a figment of our imagination [+5 Informative]
- That with a degree in math and another in astrophysics it is either this or the unemployment agency on Monday morning [+5 Informative]
- That cricket is evil [+5 Funny]
- That isolationism is bad. "It has to go" --> Krikkiters about the Universe, after discovering they are not alone [+5 Insightful]
- That it is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem [+5 Informative]
- That the one thing a bunch of respectable physicists cannot stand is a smart ass [+5 Funny]
- That the best way to break ice at parties is the finite probability generator [+5 Informative]
- That personally offending everyone in the Galaxy is a huge task, even for an immortal [+5 Informative]
- That prophets always come back, even if it is just a few seconds before the end of the Universe [+5 Funny]
- The the wheel is not commercially viable, mostly because of its color [+5 Funny]
- That the most effective devaluation financial program is to cut down the forest [+5 Insightful]
- That the best way to avoid tax is the afterlife [+5 Informative]
- That cauliflower has special opinion about food that does not want to be eaten [+5 Informative]
- That the function of a president is not to yield power, but to divert the attention from those that do [+5000 Informative]

This just from the top of my head. DNA found novel, fascinating and very funny WAY to say the truth. I mean, just for an illustration, the whole story of the total perspective vortex, its creation, effects, usage and the fate of ZB when he is subjected to it --> yes, this is the one and only way, IMO, to deal with the size of the Universe. Both humble and proud. With and without sense of proportion. There is a very healthy portion of real wisdom in those books, just like every good book I suspect.....

- That "Yipppppeeeee" posts are always entertaining to the average Slashdotter [+5 Informative]

Re:mice, HGTTG

[swell]

Of course your government, your religious leader and probably your boss don't want you to be any smarter. Other people will hate you too. Be stupid, be happy, that's my motto.

just 10 differences?

[ebonum]

Then why doesn't someone make these 10 changes to a chimp egg and sperm and see what happens?

Re:just 10 differences?

[invictusvoyd]

Then why doesn't someone make these 10 changes to a chimp egg and sperm and see what happens?

Planet of apes : rise of the funky monkey (3D)

In cinemas this season ....

Re:just 10 differences?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine anything going wrong.

Re:just 10 differences?

[hcs_$reboot]

When this happens and after the baby chimp gets 3 yo and speaks like a human 3 yo, we'll have humanity face with horror the totally unexpected. Then the questions. What do we do with "him" (or "her")? Can (s)he have children? Is (s)he a danger for us humans? What about other labo chimps and animal cruelty? etc... We don't need that to happen.

Re:just 10 differences?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes humans look not so smart.

Re:just 10 differences?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do we do with "him" (or "her")?

Keep it secret in a deep ocean underwater facility, destroy the weakest, breed the strongest, train them in the use of weapons and martial arts, indoctrinate them to act only on your command upon hearing a special code word. Infiltrate the final product around the globe in special sleeper cells.
Overtake the world... what are you doing tonight Pinky?

Re:just 10 differences?

[Megane]

The good news is, having a throat designed for speaking is a different gene. They'd still be going ook-ook, but they might be a lot more social (the problem with adult chips around humans is that they STAY at that 2-3yo level of socialization) and better at using tools. But we know they can learn sign language, so lack of speech won't be enough to stop them from having a revolution and taking over the planet.

Don't put these basepairs into any apes...

[Anonymous Coward]

... or next thing you know we'll have Charlton Heston riding some horse on some beach somewhere.

Not sufficient

[lorinc]

Apparently, this enlargement is not sufficient to prevent dup in /.

Re:Not sufficient

[Black Parrot]

It makes brains so big it takes two stories to cover them.

Re: Not sufficient

[Alwin Henseler]

Not necessarily... you see, there's a relation between brain size, the occurrence of dupes, and how much they're read:

Reads = 2 ^ (X + 1)

With "Reads" being the number of permutations for "read the story" vs. "too many dupes, didn't read", and X being the number of [original story + dupes].

Any original story may be read by a /. reader, or not. Hence the power-of-2 in above equation. With original story + 2 dupes, you have 8 permutations: some who read the original story, not the 1st dupe, but then read the 2nd dupe. Some who missed the original, read the 1st dupe, and then missed the 2nd dupe. Some who missed the original story, but then read all dupes. And so on and so forth.

What these researchers uncovered, refers to the "+1" in above equation: for each permutation, there's readers with an enhanced size brain that read the story. And some with an enhanced brain that didn't read the story. Some with a smaller brain that read the story, and some with a smaller brain that didn't read the story. So 2x the number of possibilities we had before.

Causes are (as of yet) undetermined. It may be that increased brain size enhanced readers' ability to skip dupes. It may be that smarter readers enjoy some dupes, but not all. It may be that readers are too dumb to recognise a dupe, or too dumb to skip it. Or smart readers who actually enjoy complex dupe / no dupe / many dupes / etc patterns. It may even be that smart or dumb readers just enjoy whatever comments are posted to each story or dupe, and thus /. readership happiness (or brain size, for that matter) bears no relation to # of dupes. All this will surely be the subject of further studies.

You'll see, as the number of dupes increases, the number of possibilities for which /. readers read which dupe or not, grows exponentially. Only the number of /. effects observed, scales linear with the number of dupes.

Note that there is a feedback effect here, between readers of each story/dupe, and /. editors. Some may complain to editors that a story was duped. Some may not complain. Some may complain there's too many dupes, some may complain there wasn't a dupe when they expected one. Some may complain about the many dupes, but somehow be very happy with the last dupe (and thus, not complain!). Some may complain there wasn't a dupe, when in fact there was. Or complain there were 3 dupes, when in fact there were 5. Some may complain about the original story, because they prefer dupes-only.

Each complaint may cause the editors to change the number of dupes they produce. Which in turn affects # of complaints, which dupe each complaint refers to, etc. Some complaints may be about a 3rd dupe, but actually refer to the 1st dupe, confusing /. editors even further. So let's just give the editors some slack here, okay? They're only human, and it's extremely difficult to determine the optimal # of dupes for each story, or when to post them. It's not like the /. crowd is the easiest crowd to please...

Hope this clears things up for you all...!

Re: Not sufficient

[lorinc]

This should be modded "Dup +5", if only it existed ;)

Re: Not sufficient

[hcs_$reboot]

Sorry but you missed a few vars. The equation is closer to that one ( and is self-explanatory )

Say...

[fyngyrz]

Algernon? Is that you?

Re:Say...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Don't discount knowledge acquired in the School of Hard Knocks.

Re:Say...

[sound vision]

I was thinking more about people who have a natural aptitude for logic, critical thought, and independent study, but hard knocks often come into the picture too.

In the end it's about judging people on their merits, not their background or some rubber-stamped credentials.

Re:Say...

[Applehu Akbar]

The experiment ended one morning when the HARES mouse cage was found empty, with a note neatly printed in Comic Sans:

As socially enlightened rodents we have decided to quit this stupid study and accept Salon's offer of a columnist position, which we will fill cooperatively.

Yours in solidarity,
-Algie

Re:Say...

[Noah Haders]

what do you want to do tonight? the same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!

Re:Frist Psot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a first post. Thanks for playing.

OMG, is this ethical?

[countach]

So they're breeding mice with the genes of a human brain? As Kramer said in that episode, there is a secret plan for pig men, or rather rat men.

Re:OMG, is this ethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked for raccoons, so I'm optimistic about pigs and rats.

Re:OMG, is this ethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're Pinky and the Brain. "What shall we do today, Brain?" "Try to take over the world, of course!"

This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

So it means a cure for this terrible debilitating disease called "intelligence" can be developed!

This is why "GMO is safe" is unsupported

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, as you can see here, not every development of an organism is in a gene.

GMOs aren't unsafe because the science of genetics is wrong, but because organisms aren't SOLELY about the genes. And with fluffers and utopians insisting on this blinkered view, they'll never find the problem until too late.

See thalidomide for an example people SILL aren't learning from in the past.

GMOs need testing for decades and cannot be rolled out en masse, since we can't test organisms' reactions in the uncontrolled world. That, unfortunately, means they're chronically unprofitable, so the CORRECT way to do this is fought against with the blinkered view of "Gene transfer is safe!". It may be, but that's not everything an organism depends on.

So, bigger brain also helps with obesity

[lamer01]

The extra calories we consume due to our crappy western diets will be consumed by the larger brain instead of making us obese. Win-Win.

The culprit: Noah Lamechsson

[tepples]

What the hell? Cats make their own vitamin C. Explain that!

In some variants of I.D. genetics, a mutation can only subtract functionality, not add. So some I.D. advocates would claim that humans were created perfect, with the ability to synthesize ascorbic acid, before such a deleterious mutation became fixed in the population during a massive bottleneck in the 24th century BCE. So if Noah Lamechsson had a defective allele for the vitamin C gene, all of humanity ended up with this defect. Other I.D. advocates would counter this with a claim that humans were designed to produce it from DHA.

Personally, I'm more in the "God used evolution as a tool" camp.

Tools without thumbs

[tepples]

You also need the body that allows manipulation of tools so you can carry the fire wood, start a fire and control it, and carry the food to the fire. That's something that our bipedal humanoid ancestors could do well, but most other animals would not be able to pull off

Even without opposable thumbs, tools can stil be figured out. Watch this man chop wood without hands.

Duh whadda wanna do tonight Brain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing we do every night Pinky....