Researchers at
Gladstone Institutes, University of California have looked at the connection between humans and chimps and what regions of dna they differ in. They had found that there are regions where the mutation rate for humans and chimps vary. These sites are called human accelerated regions (HARs). In humans, there were over 2600 of these sites, of them, it was deemed that about 100 of them had a very fast mutation rate in comparison to the other regions. They have decided that these 100 will be watched closely in future research. This technology has the posibility to pave the way for controlling human evolution.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131110204417.htm
http://www.genome.gov/10001177
John A. Capra,
Genevieve D. Erwin,
Gabriel McKinsey,
John L. R. Rubenstein,
and Katherine S. Pollard.
Many human accelerated regions are developmental enhancers.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B., 2013 368 20130025 DOI:
10.1098/rstb.2013.0025
Since they found that humans have a higher mutation rate then chimps would this research show links to how humans are more prone to developing cancers compared to chimps. And overtime I wonder if the diets is what controls the amount of mutation. Does the human diet cause us to have more mutations in our genes versus a chimp who has a significantly different diet.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing from this article that the HAR is involved with evolution since they want to study them in the future for controlling human evolution. How could they control evolution though? I thought it was uncontrollable because humans evolved to survive the change in their environment like natural selection almost. Yes genetically we are linked with chimps and we supposedly have evolved from them, but I'd be curious as to what other animals we have common sites with.
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