Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever 584
John Hawks writes "A new genomics study in PNAS shows that humans have been evolving new adaptive genes during the past 10,000 years much faster than ever before. The study says that evolution has sped up because of population growth, making people adapt faster to new diseases, new diets, and social changes like cities. Oh, and I'm the lead author. I've been reading Slashdot for a long time, and let me just say that our study doesn't necessarily apply to trolls."
Re:Not anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check Out the Sample Size (Score:5, Informative)
Since they peer-review their articles, I would imagine that other experts thought 270 people ought to be good enough for everyone...
Grammar Evolving Too? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Evolving OR Mutating faster? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check Out the Sample Size (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not anymore (Score:2, Informative)
The first step is to diversify the genome, which your statement points out correctly is happening at an increasing rate.
However, the second step is culling. That's where the "Survival of the Fittest" part comes in.
You need BOTH to evolve.
Re:Bad Science (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the answer: natural selection takes initially rare mutations and magnifies them to large numbers, spreading them to most of the population rapidly. Our survey was looking at things between 20 and 80 percent frequency in living populations. That means that the average person has around half the new selected mutations, even though each mutation is very recent. As a result, genetically today's people really are radically different than the average person living 5,000 years ago -- it's within the last 5000 years we are seeing the most rapid change in frequency of these new alleles.
This rapid evolutionary change has also been skeletal -- bodies really have changed during this time period. But the skeletal changes are just the tip of the iceberg -- most of the changes are metabolic, or pathogen-host interaction, or brain development -- things we will never see from the archaeological record.
Re:Prof. Hawks, is this evolution evenly distribut (Score:4, Informative)
For example, skin pigmentation genes causing lighter skin in Europeans are largely different from those in East Asians, even though they have the same general effect. Still, some specific effects, like hair pigmentation, may be quite different.
Other genes respond to selection pressures that have historically been very different. Malaria is a huge source of selection in African populations historically, but it was much less important in Europeans, for example.
As far as behavioral variations, the fact is that we don't know what most genetic changes may do. So we certainly can't say that some populations have undergone more or less behavioral change than others. Most of these changes are genetically very simple, so we're not looking at any kind of radically new changes in phenotype -- no growing antlers. The same would be true of any kind of behavioral changes under selection.
Re:Check Out the Sample Size (Score:3, Informative)
But we aren't looking at very rare things, we're looking at the most common ones -- things between 20 and 80 percent today. In this case, it's like measuring the mean -- if we measure 270 Americans, they are unlikely to be very far from the average height. Just in the same way, these people are unlikely to present unusual evidence of selection on very common alleles.
Of course, we must keep in mind the limits -- if we identify selected things in these few populations, we are not seeing many things that may exist in other populations.
Fast and Quick Have Different Meanings (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Check Out the Sample Size (Score:4, Informative)
Re:adaptation? (Score:2, Informative)
You do realise that the palestinians refuse to shake hands with israeli's as peace conferences, right ? WHO doesn't want peace here ? If this isn't the worst kind of racism, then what is ?
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26424077.htm [alertnet.org]
There can be no peace with people who want war. And any muslim who doesn't want war is not a muslim (quran 2:219), this is to be interpreted literally (quran 3:7). Also did you know that you are "less than an animal" to any muslim (quran 8:55, again whoever disagrees with this is not a muslim, so speaks allah)
Re:adaptation? (Score:3, Informative)
No, you can say that a Christian who engages in pre-marital sex, damages someone by that (e.g. pregnancy and poor conditions for the child), and doesn't regret that isn't a Christian.
Maybe any Christian that charges interest on a loan isn't a Christian.
Again you need to take the full picture into account. If a person says "I give you X now, you give me 2X tomorrow or I kill you", certainly you can say he isn't a christian.
And don't even get me started about all those people working on the sabbath....
You really haven't read the bible, have you ? What does it emphasize, and what does it de-emphasize. First anyone who works in infrastructure "stuff" is exempt from this rule. So docters, road repair workers,
So the only people you can blame are the ones working on sunday, that purposefully prevent themselves from being together with family/friends during that time. And for those, yes, you can say that their behavior is very unchristian.
You don't know anything about any of these religions, not about Christianity and not about islam. Islam = opression (literally, the word islam means opression). Please get yourself informed. There are 6 muslim "interpretations" of islam ( 4 sunni, 2 shi'a ). ALL call for extermination of non-muslims by violent means. The shi'a ones say in addition to doing this, they should lie about it. ALL say that there can never be peace (but muslims can sign peace treaties, they just can't enforce them to their armies and/or people).
If quotes from the quran don't define islam, then what does ?
"fight until there isn't a single non-muslim left, and allah reigns supreme" (quran 8:39)
I think you misunderstand how viruses work. (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, it sounds brilliant to the Slashbot crowd.