Humanity Gene Found? 231
Banana_Republican writes "Nature is reporting that that multiple copies of a mystery gene may be what makes us human. It appears that humans have multiple carbon copies of a recently discovered gene that other primates lack. In particular, one sequence not so romantically or emotionally termed 'DUF1220' was mentioned . Humans carry 212 copies of DUF1220, whereas chimps have 37 copies, and monkeys have only 30 copies. Apparently the current thinking is that this gene is responsible for coding important areas of brain function."
Re:They couldn't have come up with a better name.. (Score:5, Informative)
More Common Elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
I for one welcome our new armadillo overlords.
http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?hgsid=770
Re:I hate science reporters (Score:2, Informative)
Re:er... thats a bit of a leap (Score:3, Informative)
I'd love to get a an opinion from a someone who works in genetics.
They do claim that taken together the data from three seperate methods (BLAT http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgBlat [ucsc.edu], aCGH and QPCR - I know what PCR is and I'm reading up on the others but this is not my field) they do claim that DUF1220 is "highly expanded in humans, reduced in African great apes, further reduced in orangutan and old world monkeys, single copy in non-primate animals, and absent in nonmamalian species." They've a graph of the the number they predict from PCR for different primate species and humans and though there is some spread it seems clear that humans have more DUF1220 domains than the other primate species tested again.
However, the point remains they do not know what DUF1220 does and so saying that it leads to human traits is not very convincing. The researchers do speculate that they "may play an important role in human-lineage specific traits." So its not entirely the reporter/submitter hype. Yes I'd agree that correlation is strong basis for further investigation and thats what I asked for when I said I'd wait for there to be more evidence. Again I do not work in genetics and don't know if this is possible but it'd be a lot stronger evidence if they could implant more copies of this gene and then see that it lead to greater brain complexity or something.
Topics like this tend to get a lot of hype and sensationalism and people jump to conclusions and I'd think it would be much better to wait until the genetics community says something strongly.
And yes I was joking about the lots of stupid people Daniel. And yes they are a lot smarter than the smartest chimp or monkey. Though ever since I saw Project X I'm ashamed that chimps are better at Flight Simulator than me
DUF stands for "Domain of Unknown Function" (Score:4, Informative)
Extreme gene duplication is a major source of evolutionary novelty. A genome-wide survey of gene copy number variation among human and great ape lineages revealed that the most striking human lineage-specific amplification was due to an unknown gene, MGC8902, which is predicted to encode multiple copies of a protein domain of unknown function (DUF1220). Sequences encoding these domains are virtually all primate-specific, show signs of positive selection, and are increasingly amplified generally as a function of a species' evolutionary proximity to humans, where the greatest number of copies (212) is found. DUF1220 domains are highly expressed in brain regions associated with higher cognitive function, and in brain show neuron-specific expression preferentially in cell bodies and dendrites.