Futurismic

Have the comforts and supports of modern life ended the process of natural selection in humans? Steve Jones, genetics supremo at University College London believes so:

Before modernity, life was so tough that most children died before they reached adolescence. It was a race for survival and only the strongest made it, making out a case for natural selection. This means babies with genetic mutations that made them more resilient had better chances of survival as well as passing on their genes to their offspring.

Jones’ argument is that in a modern world of central heating and plenty of food, the same mutation is far less likely to give a child any advantage. A baby born today can expect to live a long and healthy life, which in turn works against the evolutionary tool of natural selection.

George Dvorsky opines that the theory that human beings have “stopped evolving” is incorrect because it discounts things like genetic drift, sexual selection, and of course, the self-guided evolution of transhumanists.

[image from kevindooley on flickr]

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It appears the prevailing theory as to why we age could be wrong–and that would be good news for anti-aging research (Via PhysOrg):

Age may not be rust after all. Specific genetic instructions drive aging in worms, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage akin to rust, and implies science might eventually halt or even reverse the ravages of age.

The “rust” the prevailing theory uses to explain aging is essentially the accumulated wear and tear caused by “toxins, free-radical molecules, DNA-damaging radiation, disease and stress.” But the results of the Stanford research, led by Stuart Kim, professor of developmental biology and of genetics, don’t fit that theory. Instead, they found that that hundreds of age-related genes in C. elegans nematode worms were switched on and off by a single transcription factor–a kind of signalling molecule–called elt-3, which becomes more abundant with age. Two other transcription factors that regulate elt-3 also changed with age. As a result, normal development becomes unbalanced in older organisms, something the researchers call “developmental drift.” And now that this mechanism has been found in one organism, scientists can look for it in others–including humans.

The idea that this developmental drift is behind aging rather than “rust” would explain why there are many animals that live far longer than humans:

Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100…There are whales that live to be 200, and clams that make it past 400. Those species use the same building blocks for their DNA, proteins and fats as humans, mice and nematode worms. The chemistry of the wear-and-tear process, including damage from oxygen free-radicals, should be the same in all cells, which makes it hard to explain why species have dramatically different life spans.

***

If aging is not a cost of unavoidable chemistry but is instead driven by changes in regulatory genes, the aging process may not be inevitable. It is at least theoretically possible to slow down or stop developmental drift.

The research has been published in the July 24 issue of Cell; you can download the original paper in PDF format.

Having just celebrated another birthday and thus entered my 50th year on this planet, I can only say, “Faster, please!”

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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Computers are very useful for analyzing large quantities of data, but presenting that data to humans in a useful form is an ongoing challenge. (A challenge that predates computers, actually: that’s why graphs were invented.)

Here’s an intriguing new way to examine data: turn it into music. Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, is developing a computer program that translates protein and gene expression into music: harmony represents good health, and discord indicates disease:

The first step in the gene-to-sound conversion was to pare down multiple measurements to a few fundamental signals, each of which could be represented by a different note. Together, the notes would form a harmonic chord in normal, healthy states and become increasingly out of tune as key physiological signs go awry, signaling disease.

He found, for example, that “when set to music, colon cancer sounds kind of eerie.” You can listen to some samples online. (Via KurzweilAI.net)

Alterovitz hopes the system could be tuned to identify other diseases, and might have applications outside medicine: it could be used to simplify information for air-traffic controllers or in other situations where large data sets have to be analyzed.

Not only that, a DJ in the Boston area is apparently interested in playing Alterovitz’s “music” in local bars.

Perhaps he could call it “Forever in Blue Genes.”

(Ouch, a Neil Diamond reference. I’m showing my age, aren’t I?)

(Image by Gil Alterovitz.)

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Drawing on his experiences with 23andMe’s personal genetics service, Kevin Kelly has made a couple of interesting observations. Focusing on what happens when the logic of crowdsourcing is applied to biotechnology, he comments on

how fast and how eager users have been to share their genetic data. We’ve been conditioned by anxious media reports to believe that people want to hoard their very personal genetic profile, in fear of what would happen if governments, corporations, insurance companies and the neighbors were to see it. But in fact like a lot of other things that have made it online, genetic information only increases in value when shared.

Experts thought only a fringe minority would dare share their genes, but swapping genetic info will mostly likely be the norm for a generation that shares everything else. Sharing your genetic info with family members, relatives, and even apparent strangers (who must be related somehow) is exciting, and certainly educational.

[Story via The Quantified Self. Image by CrashIntoTheSun]

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Can you imagine what the extinct birds of millions of years ago looked like? How big were they? Do they look like the birds of today? What colors were they? The first two questions are easily answerable by fossil records, but the third one is a bit more difficult, unless you have a time machine handy. But US researchers believe they’ve come a bit closer to solving the problem:

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, US researchers reveal how ancient feathers found in Brazil displayed “striking” bands of black and white. Previously, fossil experts could only guess at the range of hues exhibited by ancient birds and some dinosaurs.

To find an answer they had to look at behavioural and genetic clues:

There are particular cells that cluster into the dark areas of modern birds called melanosomes. Somehow the melanosomes are retained and replaced during the preservation process and hence you preserve a very life like representation of the colour banding in the fossils.

And also:

The Yale team believe they could identify brown, red, buff and even iridescent colours. The technique may be applied to other creatures to reveal the colour of fur or even eyes, the team believes.

This news reminds me of an SF story called The Color of A Brontosaurus, which speculates somewhat on the same subject matter.

[story via BBC News] [image by kevinzim]

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A late but strong candidate for controversial discussion-point of the month appeared yesterday in the form of visionary physicist Freeman Dyson’s article for the New York Review of Books, in which he detours into a discussion of global warming skepticism.

There’s a lot of interesting points in there, and the replies and rebuttals are coming thick and fast, but what I wanted to focus on was Dyson’s portrayal of environmentalism as a secular religion, because it turned up in my feed reader at almost exactly the same time as another article which claims software-based research suggests religion is an inevitable consequence of evolution.

If that’s the case, one wonders if religion is merely a developmental phase that we’ll eventually grow out of? One thing’s for certain - Creationists probably won’t appreciate the irony of being told their faith is a by-product of a process they don’t believe in.

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It doesn’t get much more science fictional than this - South Korean scientists have genetically engineered white kittens that glow red under ultraviolet light. [Image cribbed from linked article]

Bioluminescent gene hackery isn’t a new idea - MetaFilter has the links for the history, starting way back (!) in 1994 with E. coli and roundworm cells - but this is a new level in cute for genetic science.

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An international research team has discovered that they can obtain good DNA samples from the shafts of mammoth hair. Apparently keratin, the protein out of which hair is made, acts as a kind of plastic, preserving the DNA from contamination by marauding bacteria. The research could help scientists figure out why the mammoths went extinct at the end of the last ice age, and the technique could be applied to samples from other species that went extinct in relatively recent times, even samples that have been tucked away in museum drawers for decades. (Via National Geographic News; tip from The Walrus Said.)

Of course, what everyone really wants to know is, can we use this DNA to bring woolly mammoths back?

Short answer: maybe, but you won’t see them in Siberia’s nascent Pleistocene Park any time soon. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

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Efforts to genetically modify large animals have been hindered by the fact that the two methods currently used to effect it, somatic cell nuclear transfer or pronuclear injection, are costly, inefficient, difficult, and carry a risk of producing abnormal offspring. Now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have successfully produced genetically modified mice and goats by transferring modified genetic information via a harmless virus to male reproductive cells, which then passed the modification on naturally to about 10 percent of the offspring. In other words, genetic modification via gene therapy.

Of course, using this technique on humans in combination with in-vitro fertilization and careful weeding of the resulting embryos in order to create a genetically modified super race with abilities surpassing normal humans’ would be completely illegal and unethical, and only a deranged science fiction writer such as myself whose next book features genetically modified humans would even think of it as a possibility.

So, no worries.

(Via PhysOrg.)

(Illustration from Wikimedia Commons.)

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Anyone who, like myself, has suffered indignity and discomfort (and a serious dent to the bank balance) at the hands of the dentistry profession will probably be overjoyed to hear that scientists have discovered a way to cause the regrowth of teeth in mice. This indicates that the ability to regenerate dentition may still be dormant in human DNA as well, which is definitely something to smile about.

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