Mark Reimers, Ph.D. (Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics)
"Newest Evolutional Changes in Human Genome"
10.07.12, 19.00, Politechnical Museum, Moscow, Russia
Short Summary of the Lecture
Broad outline.
"Skeletal facts": human ancestors was walking upright about 4.000.000 years ago.
Why?
- they could run more efficiently
- they got less direct heat from the sun
Pelvis get radically shorter, because they need run uptight.
5 species of human being.
Southwest Africa.
Evolution is spreading in 10.000 years (???) including human species and other primates.
Our skeletons do look very much like their own, but our genes show at last a 10-fold speed-up in the rate of evolution in the past 50.000 years.
Human species spent more time on sun.
Getting more melanin in skin.
Most of hair was lost in 1.400.000 years ago.
Wearing clothes about 1.700.000 years (??) - and there is no gene to wear it.
Colour of skin: blond mutation comes about 10.000 years in Scandinavia (?)
Red hair appeared long before.
Why blue eyes preserved, in case of Indian race?
- more attractive
- gets more vitamin D (?)
Most animals eat not too much - human eat a lot more than he need.
Keeping herd - approximately 10.000 BC.
6.000 BC - adaptation to lactose, with milk. It's also time of epidemic diseases, like measles, coming with an agricultural revolution.
Human brain growing much more slowly than apes and chimps. More proliferate connections (it means brain developing) from intense social connections (!!).
"Monkey see, monkey do" - saying in America: famous video on Youtube about experiment with opening the box by chimp and by human child.
Chimps cooperate to hunt game, but not to solve new problems.
Human child learn by participating and watching - and asking, of course.
Are our mind still evolving?
We are still variable.
Evidence of tremendous variation between different kinds of human than kinds of human and ape.
Human is very genetically different.
We have larger brain than apes. But chimps has a lot better short-term memory.
Difference between species seen in brain cells (neurons). Relationships in prefrontal cortex more developed (in human brain). Faster connections from "social areas" to other parts of brain.
Remember, we are not super-apes. We just do things different.
97% of protein of human and ape are similar. But regulations of proteins are variable.
We don't know, what genes affect mind and how. No apes have depression, schizophrenia, etc. - maybe it's very recent, specifically human mutation. Autism, schizophrenia - we don't know yet about mutation rate of psychiatric people. People with bad (psychiatric) genes obviously died more often.
There is no change in DNA during lifetime. Good epigenetic state may change by stress or disorder; good therapist (psychotherapist?) may help. Epigenetic change doesn't pass to children.
Maybe we need a new kind of thinking. In a few years we may be able to modify human genes in embryos. Moral discussing will start now. Changes in science will occur in next 10 years (maybe 20 - I'm optimistic, he said).
End of Synopsis
[link]
[russian press-release]
"Newest Evolutional Changes in Human Genome"
10.07.12, 19.00, Politechnical Museum, Moscow, Russia
Short Summary of the Lecture
Broad outline.
"Skeletal facts": human ancestors was walking upright about 4.000.000 years ago.
Why?
- they could run more efficiently
- they got less direct heat from the sun
Pelvis get radically shorter, because they need run uptight.
5 species of human being.
Southwest Africa.
Evolution is spreading in 10.000 years (???) including human species and other primates.
Our skeletons do look very much like their own, but our genes show at last a 10-fold speed-up in the rate of evolution in the past 50.000 years.
Human species spent more time on sun.
Getting more melanin in skin.
Most of hair was lost in 1.400.000 years ago.
Wearing clothes about 1.700.000 years (??) - and there is no gene to wear it.
Colour of skin: blond mutation comes about 10.000 years in Scandinavia (?)
Red hair appeared long before.
Why blue eyes preserved, in case of Indian race?
- more attractive
- gets more vitamin D (?)
Most animals eat not too much - human eat a lot more than he need.
Keeping herd - approximately 10.000 BC.
6.000 BC - adaptation to lactose, with milk. It's also time of epidemic diseases, like measles, coming with an agricultural revolution.
Human brain growing much more slowly than apes and chimps. More proliferate connections (it means brain developing) from intense social connections (!!).
"Monkey see, monkey do" - saying in America: famous video on Youtube about experiment with opening the box by chimp and by human child.
Chimps cooperate to hunt game, but not to solve new problems.
Human child learn by participating and watching - and asking, of course.
Are our mind still evolving?
We are still variable.
Evidence of tremendous variation between different kinds of human than kinds of human and ape.
Human is very genetically different.
We have larger brain than apes. But chimps has a lot better short-term memory.
Difference between species seen in brain cells (neurons). Relationships in prefrontal cortex more developed (in human brain). Faster connections from "social areas" to other parts of brain.
Remember, we are not super-apes. We just do things different.
97% of protein of human and ape are similar. But regulations of proteins are variable.
We don't know, what genes affect mind and how. No apes have depression, schizophrenia, etc. - maybe it's very recent, specifically human mutation. Autism, schizophrenia - we don't know yet about mutation rate of psychiatric people. People with bad (psychiatric) genes obviously died more often.
There is no change in DNA during lifetime. Good epigenetic state may change by stress or disorder; good therapist (psychotherapist?) may help. Epigenetic change doesn't pass to children.
Maybe we need a new kind of thinking. In a few years we may be able to modify human genes in embryos. Moral discussing will start now. Changes in science will occur in next 10 years (maybe 20 - I'm optimistic, he said).
End of Synopsis
[link]
[russian press-release]
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