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

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.