Granpappy was a Neandertal

Fascinating stuff…read this paper in PNAS, Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage, or this short summary, or John Hawks’ excellent explanation of the concepts, it’s all good. It’s strong evidence for selection in human ancestry for a gene, and just to make it especially provocative, it’s all about a gene known to be involved in brain growth, and it’s also showing evidence for interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neandertal man.

The short short explanation: a population genetics study of a gene called microcephalin shows that a) it arose and spread through human populations starting about 37,000 years ago, b) this particular form of the gene (well, a small cluster of genes in a particular neighborhood) arose approximately 1.1 million years ago in a lineage distinct from that of modern humans, and c) the likeliest explanation for this difference is that that distinct lineage interbred with modern humans 37,000 years ago, passing on this particular gene variant that was then specifically selected for, a process called introgression.

The work looks sound to me, and I’m convinced. The one thing to watch for, though, is that there will be attempts to overreach and couple possession of this gene to some kind of intellectual superiority. We don’t know what this particular variant of the gene does yet! All we can say at this point is that some abstract data shows that a particular allele spread through the human population at a rate greater than chance would predict, that the gene itself has as one of its functions the regulation of brain growth, but that it is highly unlikely that that particular function is affected by the variant. Whatever it does, I expect the role is more along the lines of subtle fine-tuning rather than simply making people smart.

Morning-after cynicism

Democrats take back the House of Representatives and make gains in the Senate. It’s good news, right? So why am I not particularly happy?

One reason is how they won. Republicans were just plain vile: they stunk up the joint with corruption, incompetence, greed, and viciousness, and they are saddled with an unpopular president and an unpopular war. They should have been easy to beat, and the Democrats relied on winning by default. There was little attempt to campaign on progressive values, just an expectation that the discontent of the Republican voters with their ugly party would scrape away enough voters that we’d come out on top. And we did. Rah.

A perfect example: we threw Rick Santorum, one of the worst senators ever, onto the rubbish heap, to gain…Robert Casey Jr, a bland, boring, pious middle-of-the-road Democrat who is anti-choice. Was anyone excited about that candidate? You know he won purely because Santorum was such an idiot.

Local races left me little to cheer about. Bill Ingebrigtsen, the local thug who campaigned on a racist, anti-immigration platform but had loads of money to throw at mass mailings, won the 11th Minnesota senate district against a tepid, conservative Democratic incumbent. Michele Bachmann, creationist homophobe, is going to be one of Minnesota’s representatives. The creepy medieval platform of the Republican party still appeals to many voters—they’re just willing to throw them out after they’ve become associated with a failed regime.

The side of science has seen mixed results. Santorum’s gone, the Ohio races that pitted creationists against pro-science moderates seem to have all broken for the good guys, but Kansas has opted to support their creationist candidates. The fact that Bachmann could get elected in my state is discouraging: she’s a flaming anti-science, pro-god kook. Being an irrational nut is still not an obstacle to getting elected, apparently.

I don’t see a lot of hope to build on for the 2008 election. Here’s my prediction: the Republican candidate for president will run on the position that he is Not Bush, while still accommodating the core Republican constituencies of the religious and the rich. The Democratic candidate will run on the position that he or she is Not Bush, and, as we’ve learned to expect, will avoid being too closely associated with his or her core Democratic constituencies of the secular and the working class and labor in order to try to appeal to Republican voters. All the Republicans who fled their party in revulsion during this election cycle will look at their choices of two Not Bushes, and pull the lever for the one who panders best to their Prosperity Christianist faith. The Democrats will try to stir up a pro forma enthusiasm for their nominated functionary, and we’ll instead spend most of the campaign moaning about what a godawful boring Republican-Lite drone we’ve nominated.

We’ll lose.

Unless the Democrats actually learn to fight for a cause rather than moping about hoping to pick up voters disaffected by Republican incompetence, yesterday’s victories are only going to be temporary. Does anybody think that will happen in our new Democratic congress?

In the long run, though, the real issues have to be this thundering race between China and the US to see who can puke the most carbon into the atmosphere, America’s attempt to bankrupt itself with debt, and our ongoing efforts to blind ourselves to the problems with religion. The Republican goal is to make the problem worse, the Democrats will continue to bumble about and avoid any conflict, and the media will find Britney Spears’ divorce more interesting. Come back in a century and look at America, and I think what you’ll find is Easter Island with tabloids.

Hands off those genes

Here’s an annoying case of political correctness run amuck.

…the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) Gene Nomenclature Committee…is renaming a number of genes that have potentially offensive or embarrassing names.

The shortlist of 10 genes - including radical fringe, lunatic fringe and, bizarrely, Indian hedgehog – was compiled in response to physicians’ worries about “inappropriate, demeaning and pejorative” names.

The problem arose because most of the genes were initially discovered in fruitflies, and their names were then transferred to the human versions of the genes, which were discovered later…when applied to the human versions of the genes, many of these names become uncomfortable.

While no one wants to curtail the creativity of fruitfly geneticists, it will be important to ensure that, in the future, no joky names are adopted for human genes where they might cause offence. Other quirky names in the fruitfly genome include headcase and mothers against decapentaplegia (MAD).

Darn prissy physicians. They’ve got no sense of humor. Will they try to rename one-eyed pinhead next? How about half baked? The zebrafish geneticists are just as amusing, you know.

I’d like to know what the physicians are concerned about, anyway. It’s not as if they’re going to be informing patients that their illness is caused by a broken frizzled gene, nor is it going to be somehow better or easier if they rename it “Wnt Receptor X-17” or something similarly dry and empty. I hope whoever started this knows a good proctologist who can do a stick-ectomy.

And seriously, there ought to be something like the priority rules of taxonomy to prevent random gomers from running around changing names just because they don’t like them.

TBogg reads Lileks so I don’t have to

Really. We Minnesotans are so uncivil that we never read Lileks, we leave that to foreigners with more tolerance for twee jingo. Out here, we see that face in the Star Tribune and we say “Gah, #%$$&!” (or other such un-mild, un-Minnesotan phrases), and turn the page to the comics section…where we mutter other unholy terms of exasperation at Mallard Fillmore. (How the hell did that mindless, unfunny loon* end up in our newspaper?)

*Whether I’m referring to Lileks or the cartoon duck is left as an exercise for the reader.)

O Brave New World, please come to pass

A reader has asked me to comment on this interesting and controversial technique for generating stem cells. Investigators in the UK are requesting permission to do this:

  1. Collect ova from cows. This is routine, done-all-the-time stuff. The cows can’t complain.

  2. Extract the nuclei from the eggs and throw them away, so that all you have is a lovely membrane-bound sack of cytoplasm and other organelles. People who eat hamburgers don’t get to complain about destroying potential life, so this is OK, too.

  3. Extract nuclei from human cells and throw the cytoplasm away. These can be taken from non-reproductive tissues—epithelia, for instance, or some blood cells. This is not controversial either—you throw away human cells and nuclei every time you sneeze or brush your hair.

  4. You can see where this is going, can’t you? Combine the cow cytoplasm from step 2 with the human nuclei from step 3, and by various finagling (and this part is actually the hardest step) reset the nucleus to a state which allows further development. Let the cell develop into a blastocyst, from which you can harvest stem cells for research. (Promise not to let it develop any further than that, though.)

  5. Watch fundamentalists die of apoplexy. (This might be the most morally dicey part of the experiment.)

Now I’m asked what I think of this whole procedure. I can answer with one word:

[Read more…]

GO VOTE!

Minnesota polling places are now open. You should be able to vote between 7AM and 8PM, so get out there and do it!

I’m looking at you UMM students, too. No apathy allowed. I’ll have a bowl of candy in my office—show me your “I voted” sticker, or tell me you did (I’m so trusting), and you can have a piece.

I voted 15 minutes after the polls opened, and I was the 16th voter. I think turnout is going to be good out here on the Minnesota prairies.

It was a paper ballot, too, and if a candidate’s name had a (Democrat-Farmer-Labor) after it, they got my vote. I was jubilantly partisan today.