4 ms·
That's a pretty subtle case but I don't think it's relevant to the issue of human evolution for at least two reasons: (1) humans have universal intelligence wh
by roceasta 9y ago
That's a pretty subtle case but I don't think it's relevant to the issue of human evolution for at least two reasons:
(1) humans have universal intelligence which gives us the ability to adapt to any environment,
(2) human evolution is now swamped by the evolution of memes, not genes. We now decide what to do (including whether to speciate or not)
A more realistic analogy from the animal kingdom would be something like the case of farmed salmon which within a very few generations are less healthy than wild salmon. Also the famous 'mouse utopia' experiment. Both situations where the environment has been artificially manipulated by (human) ideas, just as our present environment is. Mutational loading is one explanation for the results.
So have you considered the issue of mutational load: what's the greatest load we can sustain and what's its present level? Is it responsible, for example, for the declining birth rates in the West or is the explanation for that purely sociological?
I would like to know the answers. However I presume that we'll start by using CRISPR or similar tech to eliminate known genetic diseases like Huntington's and Tay-Sachs. From that precedent should follow the identification and elimination of new and more silent genetic abnormalities. Which is reassuring.
- evolve2017 9y agoI guess I would need to see an analysis of whether there's been any change in human allele frequencies. I suspect there hasn't. But to your example, one issue with the farmed fish is that they now constitute a closed gene pool - we can easily explain their decreased fitness with the likely rise of harmful alleles. With the explosion of population, I don't see much relationship between the salmon and humans.
- roceasta 9y agoThanks. I should read up a bit. Can you link to any decent info or discussion about allele frequencies?
- evolve2017 9y agoIncidentally, I'll be starting a PhD in a human genetics laboratory, but I don't have a lot of experience with this kind of literature. This seems like a reasonably accessible (college-biology level) discussion of what evolution would look like in the human gene pool: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933187/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933187/ ---- EDIT: I suspect you'll need a university library to access this, but Dr. Pardis Sabeti is well known in this area and also an amazing person - she played a big role in the molecular biology work that underlay the US response to the Ebola crisis. She wrote a review that explains the tools we currently have to ascertain human evolution: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16778047 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16778047
- evolve2017 9y agoA recent study that peripherally relates to our discussion came up on my facebook feed: https://hms.harvard.edu/news/recession-proof https://hms.harvard.edu/news/recession-proof