What genetic variation makes our species unique?

This generation follows the other generation, anthropologists always looking for ways to discover what made us human.

The famous classical painter Louis Leakey thinks that it is the labor tools that make up humans. In the 1960s, when he discovered a human-like skull surrounded by bone working tools in Tananian, he named it Homo habilis, Homo habilis is using stone as a labor tool (Photo: devargaselementary), a man who assumes that he has been able to build the first working tool of the human race. However, when Jane Goodall, a learned primate, proved that chimpanzees could also use a variety of tools, researchers have argued since then whether Homo habilis really belongs to the Homo race. or not.

Subsequent studies focused on the unique traits of humankind as a social herding behavior, individual behavioral culture, communication through language, laughter and a set of big brain. However, scientists have found that some species also have some characteristics such as chimpanzees who also have culture, although rudimentary, can speak and rats can giggle when being patted. Like other species, there is a unique genome shaped by evolutionary history. Today, for the first time, scientists can focus on the fundamental questions of anthropologists at a new level: What genetic changes make us human?

With the human genome in hand and primate genome data being harvested, we are entering the era that can help us figure out which genetic changes make us separate from them. our goods. From the genome information of monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans . it will also help show which ancient genotypes are considered to be the center of primates' evolutionary plants.

Multiple analytical statistics show that the genetic difference between chimpanzees and chimpanzees is extremely surprising at just 1.2%. Remember that a change on every 100 bases can affect thousands of genes, and the difference may be larger if we consider adding insertion or removing one (or more) bases. Even if we judge all the different sequences (about 40 million) between humans and chimpanzees, what will they mean? There will be many interesting things, including many sequences that are simply the result of genetic 6 million years of 'drifting' and therefore no or little effect on the body or human behavior, meanwhile a few sequences, albeit small, have a very strong impact, these capacitors belong to a harmonic group or an unencrypted sequence.

It is half of these differences that help identify (species) that are chimpanzees, not humans. But how do we classify all these differences?

One way is to zero all the genes they are favored to

Human DNA structure (Photo: bbc)

ch in the natural selection process on people. Finding subtle traces in the selection of human DNA and other primates has indicated that there are dozens of such genes, especially genes involved in host-parasite interactions, reproductive, sensory system like taste, .

But not all of these genes help us to be different from our primate relatives. Our genome shows that humans have evolved specifically for malaria parasites, but the malaria defense barrier does not create us. Some researchers by detecting clinical mutations directly affect some of the important characteristics of humanity, thus detecting the evolution of these genes, in this direction people are always interested in a group of genes rather than a single gene. For example, when MCPH1 and ASPM are mutated, they will cause a small head, while the abnormal FOXP2 gene causes the child to lose language ability, and the concern is that all three genes show that they are signs of important evolutionary pressure in humans, not chimpanzees. Therefore, scientists believe that these genes play an important role in helping the human brain develop in volume and form the ability to communicate verbally.

However, even if the genes mentioned above are true, they have those functions, but it's really too hard to understand what they do. The knockout experiment, the classic form that geneticists often use to detect gene function, cannot be applied to humans or primates for humanitarian reasons. So the possible work could be to compare the genome and morphology from a large number of people and groups of monkeys. Indeed, some researchers are pushing for a project called the "great monkey monkey" to catch the flood of genome data along with morphological information on human monkeys. Another group of scientists went the other way, that is, they searched for information from the different variants of the human race, through the mutations discovered in the living population they hoped to be able to track. subtle differences in both biology and behavior. Both directions of this study have encountered two major problems, namely strong enough statistics and social ethics, but hopefully will be overcome.

Finally, scientists believe that, in order to understand the specialized characteristics that make up humans, it must include DNA information and other relevant information. Researchers are also returning to consider the inherently controversial traits as a sophisticated technical and cultural language in which nature as well as nature play a leading role. We are in the genome era, but we realize that we humans need more genes than form.

Tran Hoang Dung