Comments on: Comments on 5795

Post number 5795

hijinx — Sun, 11 Feb 2001 09:45:17 -0800

"There are only a few hundred genes that we have in the human genome that are not in the mouse genome," says Craig Venter, chief scientific officer at Celera Genomics. Information on the human genome released today reveals that there are far fewer genes than first thought - humans only have double the amount that worms and flies do. [more inside...]

By: hijinx

hijinx — Sun, 11 Feb 2001 09:47:33 -0800

In addition, the article reveals that race is (surprise!) not a scientific concept, which is kind of a scientific "duh" to me. Also of note is that males are generally "responsible" for mutations of the base genomes. While the amount of genes being fewer than expected doesn't make things easier, it means that we might not be as high up on the ol' scale as we thought. I haven't been following any of this up until now, but I find it utterly fascinating.

By: muppetboy

muppetboy — Sun, 11 Feb 2001 12:52:06 -0800

Perhaps there will be a new book soon "Of Men and Mice"

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sun, 11 Feb 2001 13:43:59 -0800

Washington Post has a good front-page article http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54653-2001Feb10.html

By: fiery

fiery — Mon, 12 Feb 2001 00:14:32 -0800

stbalbach's contribution is a far superior article, I highly reccomend it. Thanks stbalbach.

By: beth

beth — Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:10:31 -0800

Keep in mind that in order for our genes to express themselves properly, they require a human maternal environment during the embronic and fetal stages.

That is, a lot of what happens is enabled by the complex environment of the human womb, which provides the context for the baby's initial development.

That greatly reduces the number of genes needed compared to, say, frogs, which aren't warm-blooded and must have a large number of proteins coded for in their DNA to handle various conditions under which they might develop. If the temperature is in a certain range, they'll need one enzyme, but if it's a couple degrees warmer, they'll need a different one, and so on. With the constancy of a warm human womb to hang out in, the number of instructions needed decreases - the DNA code can make assumptions about the developmental environment, as it were.

Plus, add chaos theory, and there ya go. Or, here we are.

By: rodii

rodii — Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:38:17 -0800

Very nice, Beth. There's good discussion of all that in "The Collapse of Chaos" by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, by the way. I love the fact that we have only 60% as many genes as *rice*.