Another line of future research may be to search for de novo genes across an entire group of organisms, such as primates. "Can we say de novo mutations happen more often in humans, and if so, why?" McLysaght says. "Also, if we find older examples of de novo genes that occurred earlier in our family tree and are shared by several descendant species, we can study how these genes evolve over time, and by seeing what they do in related species, we might be able to discover what they do in us."

9 Comments

1. 1. BillR 08:31 AM 11/18/11

   Now the UFO types are going to start saying "Science cannot explain why so many new genes appeared so they must have been implanted by extraterrestrials."

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2. 2. smcnerne 12:47 PM 11/18/11

   In the words of The Onion "If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting Of Gays, He Would Have Given Me The Warmth And Compassion To Do So"
   
   On a sincere note, nice story Charles.

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3. 3. MadScientist72 01:15 PM 11/18/11

   "On the other hand, all the de novo genes were active only at relatively low levels in the tissues analyzed. 'Thus, it could be argued that they play only weak biological roles,' Wu notes."
   The data on these genes is way to preliminary for that argument. Their activity could easily be dependent on products from other cell types, in which case in vitro studies couldn't accurately describe in vivo activity. Also, activity could vary greatly at different times in life (such as during embryonic/fetal development). It could be very informative to splice some or all of these into another animal and see how its development changes. Of course, the radical right-wingers would fight tooth-&-nail to prevent that from ever happening.

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4. 4. bigbopper 01:30 PM 11/18/11

   Fascinating. We are on the verge of achieving a complete understanding of ourselves biologically. The repercussions will be enormous, surprising, and unpredictable.

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5. 5. Ralf123 in reply to BillR 08:40 PM 11/19/11

   Of course, since evolution is a hoax. I demand to see all emails from those evil researchers!

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6. 6. alan6302 07:37 PM 11/20/11

   humans were genetically engineered by the long ears for the purpose of slavery. We then killed them.

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7. 7. Solutionism 09:25 PM 11/21/11

   "suggesting that de novo genes might have played a key role in the evolution of the human mind". This comes from an antiquated view of gene theory but one that is more easily grasped by the layman. The chance of even one of these genes evolving in 14 billion years is less than one over the number of atoms in the known universe and that's if the entire mass of the universe is prewarmed amino acid soup. The chance of 60 popping into existence in a few tens of millions of years with only an infinitesimal fraction of the mass of the earth to work with is par for the course for evolution.

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8. 8. firewilson in reply to BillR 01:08 PM 3/15/12

   thanks, i had not thought of that. it'll work for me.

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9. 9. firewilson 01:11 PM 3/15/12

   oh heck. in my opinion, the human is still not completely evolved. far far far from it. especially in the brain.

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