The Human Mutation 339
eldavojohn writes "Scientists in China have announced finding the gene that makes us human. The article explains that prior work has shown that humans, as compared with the great apes from which we diverged over 5 million years ago, have a longer form of a protein (type II neuropsin) located in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. From the article: 'Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.' The team is urging further analysis of the extra 45 amino acids in type II neuropsin since they believe that chain may cause protein structural and functional changes. The research didn't link anything with this protein, simply identifying it as a very distinct difference between us and our closest cousins."
Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:3, Funny)
I for one, welcome our new english speaking tyrannical ape-like overlords.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Funny)
You're about six years too late for that.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Funny)
They did not have an infinite number to choose from, after all.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Funny)
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Do we have to have this in every fucking thread?
There are a lot of other reasons to dislike Bush, most notably his use of the Constitution for toilet paper.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Funny)
> You're about six years too late for that.
The original poster said "english speaking", clearly this can't be a reference to the president.
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I for one, welcome our new english speaking tyrannical ape-like overlords.
And I for one welcome the thoughts on the creationists and other fundies on this one. It's going to be fun.
"We can't do this!"
"Why not?"
"We'll be creating humans! Only God can do that!"
"So you're saying that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor?"
"Err..."
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Interesting)
What if we produce a subspecies (I think that line is awfully close), are responsible for its care and preventing its extinction?
Now:
What if we create a subspecies with limited intellect and self awareness, but capable of simple tasks: dig here, carry this from here to there, turn the red lever sideways, turn the blue lever up and down, etc.
What now? What rights do they have? do we allow them to work in mines and nuclear plants? are they disposable? or better yet: are humans (homo sapiens) less disposable?
This worries me no end and has nothing to do with religion.
-nB
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head, there.
Can they vote? All men are created equal, right? Even ones we create?
What if we can reproduce with them? (shudder) Cause if we can, someone will.
I can only see bad coming out of something like this and really not much potential good.
Less profitable if they can breed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can only see bad coming out of something like this and really not much potential good.
Well if Monsanto, or any of the other big firms into genetic research produce them, you can be sure that they'll be sterile. They wouldn't want anyone breeding their own after delivery; they'd want you to go back to the source for another fresh batch of clones.
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If you're talking about the "terminator gene" [wikipedia.org], Monsanto has pledged not to use it.
They wouldn't want anyone breeding their own after delivery; they'd want you to go back to the source for another fresh batch of clones.
They might want repeat business? I may die of shock!
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Well, sure. My (poorly made) point was that public pressure can make a difference. At the very least it gave us a few more years before such technology will be used, that way we're more prepared for it. On the other hand, it might just demonstrate that the customers are the ones dictating what companies end up doing.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Funny)
People, people, please remember that when you have sex with an ape, you're also having sex with every ape that ape has ever had sex with!
-paraphrased from Night Stand
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Are humans less disposable? Of course not. Humans are no more or less disposable than the plants in our flower gardens. Life is life, the vegetarians are closer to this realization then most, they just stopped with a comparison to animals. We have a built in evolution mechanism that causes us to relate more closely with things that are gene
Let's introduce the gene into... (Score:3, Insightful)
Underpeople (Score:5, Interesting)
Also see "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, and "The Last Castle" by Jack Vance.
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Then expect more outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Can it sew shoes? Well, cool. All those jobs were moved to inhuman sweatshops in poorer countries long ago. Imagine the savings if you don't even have to pay those salaries. Just dig some bunker with a thousand monkey cages, and make them sew for 18 hours a day, for the cost of just some water and biomass as food. Ok, they'll probably wear out pretty quickly at that rate, but you can always replace them and use the previous ones as extra protein for the next generation.
Can it operate a phone and compare simple questions to a canned FAQ? (Not necessarily intelligently or successfully, mind you.) Yay. There go the first level tech support jobs. Let's be honest, it _is_ a cheap monkey job as far as every manager in the organisation sees it. Level 1 is there just to deflect the trivial stuff from reaching the expensive level 2 guys, and occasionally discourage some people from escalating even non-trivial stuff. If you're a qualified nerd in a level 1 job, well, you have my sympathy, so take it as: you don't belong there.
Ok, so the monkeys probably won't have a larynx capable of human speech, but I'm sure someone will figure out some text-to-speech scheme.
For that matter, can it operate a keyboard? Well, the drive of the last half a century straight was to buy expensive tools and believe that now even less qualified burger-flippers can write your programs with them. Never mind that that guy is incapable of abstract algorithmic thought and too bored to even learn the language. The nice salesman from IBM/MS/BEA/whatever said that you don't need expensive smart guys any more. Any semi-trained monkey can write great enterprise programs with their tools in 21 days, don't you know? And that nice salesman plays such a nice game of golf, that he's surely trustworthy.
If that sounds like made-up fiction, sadly, it isn't. I actually know of two departments which hired their programmers by reverse auction. Whoever wants less money gets the job, no further qualifications needed or questions asked. Literally. Needless to say, they ended up with people about as sharp as a bowling ball. In the words of Foghorn Leghorn, "I've seen, AH SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer." Some were just now discovering stuff like that they need to put quotes around a string, and some were having trouble understanding why. One guy had trouble understanding why the variable he declared in the constructor isn't visible in another method. Etc.
Plus, think of all the other advantages of putting semi-human monkeys in those jobs. For starters, who's gonna force you to pay for overtime or let them unionize? Schedules of 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, here we come. I'm sure some PHB (e.g., at EA) would ejaculate in his pants out of sheer joy at _that_ thought.
Or imagine the joy on some "your job could be the next to move to India" PHB's face, when he can replace it with the even more demeaning threat of, "remind me why I don't hire one of those new monkeys to do your job?"
Etc.
I'm sure there's a fun new economy just waiting to be discovered.
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It's Called Slavery (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past human societies may not have had the ability to create subspecies genetically, but they did have the ability to declare entire groups of people as a subspecies and treat them accordingly.
Women, Slavs, Africans, Native Americans, subjugated peoples of all kinds have at one time or another been declared a human "subspecies" and have been forced under duress to labour without pay or freedom. It's a common thread throughout history one which we think in our enlightenment will "never happen again", but we are really just fooling ourselves.
If we did manage to create a species that could talk, understand our speech, perform complex chores, (work in nuclear plants!), it would be ridiculous to state that they were entitled to no rights whatsoever. They would clearly be self aware and as intelligent as us. However, people would declare them to be "inferior", and they would become the new slave caste in society. People would justify this with all kinds of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, but at the end of the day we'd be no different from the old southern whipmasters going out of their way to justify an unjustifiable act.
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The problem with using monkeys is that we can pick up a fair amount of information about how they're feeling from their faces and body language ( being similar to our own ) and that leads us to empathise with them which isn't ideal if the purpose is to treat them like biologic
and why did aliens come here? (Score:2)
This is a 60000 yr training session, now we will make 120,000,000 spaceships for them in 2050. And a whole modern planet built nicely.
All they have to do is activate the 'do not reproduce gene'
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Insightful)
No offense, but ... Worry about the superspecies, not the subspecies. What happens when advantageous chimp genes are applied to a human? The chimps have had an extraordinary amount of selective pressure that our intellect has overcome; There's probably something very useful in that grab-bag.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Insightful)
'It is the recognition of Santa Claus, the concept of Santa. No matter if you accept it or deny it, or say "I do not know". If you capable to answer the question "Does Santa Claus exist?" in any way: positive, negative or ignorant way, once you have been presented with it, then you are a human.'
We do not need God or even a "concept of God" to be human.
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mapkinase, you take yourself and your silly adherence to myth and superstition far too seriously.
For a while, it was thought that what distinguished humans from other animals was the ability to reason. It turns out this difference is only a matter of degree: For example, there have been recent experiments with ravens which indicate the bird's ability to look at a situation and reason out a solution without resorting to the more animal-typical process of learning from trial and error. Tests with apes have
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Maybe you're only talking about the species as a whole, no
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I think all the secularists/humanists are misreading the OPs comment. It's not about God, per se. It's the concept of the abstract. To be able to understand the concept of a possibility of something that cannot be universally sensed. To have the capacity to understand concepts beyond one's own experiences. Another example may be "black hole" or "quantum theory" or "the Jewish Holocaust" - although the last one actually happened, those alive today probably weren't there to experience it, yet we can pass
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't any sort of counterargument — I think your claim is wildly speculative, and not currently provable or falsifiabl — but I thought I'd mention it as it also concerns human evolution and the capacity for religious thought.
In The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris suggests that religious impulses are a residual remnant from a more hierarchical social structure earlier in our primate ancestry. We moved from a model where we spent most of our time munching fruit in trees and an alpha male led the monkey troop to a model where we supplemented our diet with small game (as chimps to now) which required greater collaboration and necessitated a more egalitarian social structure. There might still be an alpha male, but one with less power. I quote:
Now, this claim isn't provable either, and I think that since The Naked Ape there has been a lot of rethinking about how much of a role collaborative hunting really played in hominid social structure. But it's some food for thought.
Re:Obligatory Planet of the Apes (Score:4, Funny)
You mean the RIAA?
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(And heck, I'm not even from America....)
Uh oh, (Score:5, Funny)
Good job (Score:4, Funny)
Now that the prior work is already covered, the AACS can't copyright us.
Mix this protein into a food chain and... (Score:4, Funny)
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genetic warfare (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, I expect something else... (Score:4, Funny)
The only good side of this is that, for once, Slashdotters will NOT be affected
longer form of a protein? (Score:3, Funny)
As long as... a spaghetti noodle, perhaps?
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The best part about this protein.... (Score:5, Funny)
Chip H.
Maybe that's what killed my dog... (Score:3, Funny)
I hope Karma is real and he comes back as a piss-off research ape in a Chinese lab and rips some arms off of someone responsible.
So lemme get this straight.... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Scientist looks for said difference.
3. Scientist discovers said difference.
4. World in awe of Scientists intellectual prowess.
5. Story makes Slashdot.
6. Jokes made about overlords and beowulf clusters.
7. World realizes that there are protein and amino acid differences encoded in our genes
8. World realizes that world already suspected as much and Scientist fades into obscurity.
9. "Neuropsin" ends up as most obscure Jeopardy answer EVER
This is cool and all, but unless we plan on manipulating those genes in Apes and three years later accepting simian dominance of our world I can't see how this impacts anyone but grant writers.
Re:So lemme get this straight.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm assuming here that the mutation is involved in communication, as I know that the wiring in the front of the brain is linked to autism, which impacts the brain's I/O channels, and I/O is a major difference between apes and humans. However, this is an assumption and should be taken as such.
We know that the ability to filter information has changed over time. Some of that has been changes elsewhere in the brain, but there is no advantage in a brain adapting to process information it hasn't got. Whereas, we already know from tetrachromats and synesthetes that there IS a usable advantage in getting information that would not normally be processed. If this gene is responsible for improving I/O bandwidth, then we should see a series of minor mutations over time that correspond to known I/O improvements within the brain.
Could this be useful in some other way? Well, provided (a) it is involved in I/O enhancements, and (b) we can understand the relationship between changes within it and those enhancements, it should be possible to induce mutations that can improve the brain further, provided the change did not exceed the brain's ability to adapt.
Re:So lemme get this straight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? I mean, sure, it seems to have a role in the forward part of the brain, but rather a lot of things go on there.
What you are doing is variously known as "idle speculation" at best and "jumping to conclusions" at worst. Neither serve the ends of science particularly well, although a little bit of idle speculation can be scientifically valuable.
As usual for
There is hope this might lead to advanced therapy (Score:2)
For the humanity deficient. Compulsory vaccination with Type II Neuropsin enabling virus and the world may be cured of lawyerism in all its forms.
Re:So lemme get this straight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
9. World's knowledge of the world is slightly improved by Scientist affirming suspected hypothesis and introducing more data to World.
Not every scientific discovery has to be of the earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting variety.
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It seems that it could be useful for medical research. The more human we can make the apes the closer their responses to various test drugs and procedures are to our own.
Obscure Jeopardy answers... (Score:2)
I'll take "Animal Genitalia, Audio Clues", for $600 Alex.
[Thank you Colin Mochrie, Who's Line is it Anyway?]
In other words (Score:4, Funny)
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You're right. There's no way Professor X will let that many Slashdotters hang out in his house.
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LACTOSE TOLERANT MAN!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance [wikipedia.org]
Typical... (Score:2, Insightful)
They did not actually find the gene which "makes us human," as that would actually be several million genes (1.2% of the human genome). They found a gene which causes apes to produce "neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory."
Tell me if I'm wrong (sources if you can find them) but don't apes already have near the level of learning and memory we have? They have some level of socialization and tool use, which are two of the important ideas that set
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene#Composition_of_
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Why? Because humans actually have some sort of moral code? I think most scientific research has proved otherwise.
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IMO, a better breakthrough would be to see if apes have some sort of moral code
Why? Because humans actually have some sort of moral code? I think most scientific research has proved otherwise.
I believe the GP was speaking in terms analogous to "see if apes have some sort of language". You don't look for a gene that encodes for some particular conception of morality any more than you look for a gene that codes for speaking French. However, it makes perfect sense to look for a gene coding for moralistic thought (i.e. neurological structures involved in normative reasoning), as much as it make sense to look for a gene coding for language use (i.e. neurological structures involved in the use of lan
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You're wrong (Score:2)
We're sufficiently social
We're can think abstractly
We can communicate abstractly
We don't make our children figure things out on their own
We're omnivorous, which makes agriculture much easier to develop
We have highly dexterous manipulators
We're aggressive
New adverts: (Score:2, Funny)
Infinite Typing Monkey (Score:2)
[...]
simply identifying it as a very distinct difference
There are other genes different between humans and other apes. Identifying them requires something like a diff run, not the complex analysis reported in this story. Apparently lacking the human neuropsin gene doesn't disqualify submitters from Slashdot.
Damn. (Score:2, Funny)
Ummm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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A new form of that old cliche (Score:5, Funny)
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No single human gene (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite the overreaching title (Score:2)
They always forget the two less chromosomes (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:They always forget the two less chromosomes (Score:4, Informative)
This is generally not mentioned because this is not actually an issue. The two chromosomes are not missing, they are simply merged. The same genetic material is there, it's just that four of them got linked together into two longer chromosomes somewhere in our ancestral path.
Supporters of creationism frequently clamor about two going missing, but geneticists can pinpoint exactly where the two pairs of chromosomes bonded, and show the correspondence between the two species in the unbonded and bonded chromosomes. If anything, this is spectacular support for evolution, since evolution predicts that the chromosomes would have to still be there with such a recent evolution, and they in fact are.
Re:They always forget the two less chromosomes (Score:5, Insightful)
Chromosome count mutations are fairly well understood, and are separate from the genetic mutations they're talking about here. [madsci.org]
Your argument has been covered at talk.origins [talkorigins.org] (the standard site for checking background on evolutionary "counter"-arguments.)
Please, find the time to have pride in yourself and humility in your opinions: Be proud enough to not express an opinion until you have checked it, and be humble enough to accept that the sum total of people that work in a field, having deep knowledge of it, have a large chance of having thought about the same things as you - and possibly thought better. Then, when you find a case where they haven't, even when you've checked, you can make a real contribution :)
Eivind.
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Now we know (Score:3, Funny)
human rinds (Score:2)
Glagnar's human rinds! It's a buncha muncha cruncha human!
Obvious suggestion? (Score:2)
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They already tried it, but the mutated ape wasn't intelligent.
You can read up on the experiment br googling for "dubya".
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Re:Lies!/soup (Score:3, Informative)
INGREDIENTS:
* 4 eggs or egg substitute
* 1/2 cup club soda
* 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
* 2 Tbsp finely chopped parsley
* Salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
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If only the world knew what happens on slashdot..
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Re:Tag this article deathofcreationism (Score:5, Insightful)
- 1) they'll regard it as a new revelation of [God]'s mystery
- 2) they'll regard it as neat information about the world, but irrelevant to their faith because their faith isn't derived from anything in the physical world, or
- 3) they'll regard it as a test of their faith
Thoreau once said, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." There's a lesson in there: there's no other possible world available to you than the one you've made space for in your mind. The religious are awake to their kind of day, and you and I are awake to a different kind of day based on different logical, rational, or asserted postulates (from which all else follows pretty rationally once you accept the prior postulate).Hey, for all we know, they might be right. (May his noodly gloriousness be merciful when the rapture comes, if that's the case.)
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Religious people and organizations can and do make predictions about reality based on their faith. Time and again, science has proven these religious predictions to be false. The religious people make a big fuss, end up looking like fools, and ultimately, dozens or hundreds of years later, change their beliefs, all the while pretending that their creed is unchanging,
Re:Tag this article deathofcreationism (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, there is no amount of evidence that will convince the really staunch ID proponents. Then again, there are still people who believe in geocentrism.
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How is that even possible, given religion is a faith?
Geocentric? (Score:2, Funny)
Then there's the Turtles of course
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God set in motion the rules of physics and chemistry for the universe and created everything you see (and don't see).
We aren't a result of the universe.
It is a result of us.
It didn't come from us but it is here for us to exist.
What world do you live in where you can just state these kind of wild hypotheses with no evidence whatsoever and expect anybody to accept that as a reasonable argument?
Oh, that's right. The religious one where that actually is a perfectly compelling argument.
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How about if you eat your own medicine?
Bert
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God and creationism is a marker that reads: "Stop thinking here". Your assertion that some god set in motion the rules of Physics and Chemistry is fantasy. Your drivel about us and the universe is logically inconsistent. Evolution has never been disproved. The data doesn't contradict it, and I don't see anyone inventing data to support the theory. Your statement that evolution is only a theory is asinine. Your statement that it doesn't make predictions is false (do some research). I have a better theory abo
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Other way around, I'm afraid.
In Soviet Russia (Score:2)
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Re:you maniacs! (Score:3, Funny)
That's it Mr. Moderator
Report to base camp. CmdTaco will read you the mod guide while the rest of us injects you with some neurospin