Genetic engineering will bring us new Bolts and Shaqs.
the potential improvements achievable by doping effort are relatively modest. In weightlifting, for example, Mike Israetel, a professor of exercise science at Temple University, has estimated that doping increases weightlifting scores by about 5 to 10 percent. Compare that to the progression in world record bench press weights: 361 pounds in 1898, 363 pounds in 1916, 500 pounds in 1953, 600 pounds in 1967, 667 pounds in 1984, and 730 pounds in 2015. Doping is enough to win any given competition, but it does not stand up against the long-term trend of improving performance that is driven, in part, by genetic outliers.
.. The genomics researcher George Church maintains a list of some of these single mutations. They include a variant of LRP5 that leads to extra-strong bones, a variant of MSTN that produces extra lean muscle, and a variant of SCN9A that is associated with pain insensitivity.4
Nettie Stevens discovered XY sex chromosomes. She didn’t get credit because she had two X’s.
Wilson still believed environmental factors played a role in determining sex. Stevens said it was purely the chromosomes. Neither view could be confirmed absolutely at the time of the discovery.
.. It’s a classic case of the “Matilda effect,” a term named after the abolitionist Matilda Gage. The effect is the phenomenon that women’s accomplishments tend to be co-opted, outright stolen, or overshadowed by those of male peers. Stevens is far from the only woman scientist to have this happen to her: Rosalind Franklin, whose work was crucial to the discovery of DNA, got similarly sidelined later in the 20th century.
How Neanderthals Gave Us Secret Powers
In 2010, scientists discovered that Tibetans owe their tolerance of low oxygen levels in part to an unusual variant in a gene known as EPAS1.
.. In 2014, Nielsen and colleagues found that Tibetans or their ancestors likely acquired the unusual DNA sequence from Denisovans, a group of early humansfirst described in 2010 that are more closely related to Neanderthals than to us. The unique gene then flourished in those who lived at high altitudes and faded away in descendants who colonized less harsh environments.
.. To Akey’s surprise, both maps found that the most common adaptive Neanderthal-derived genes are those linked to skin and hair growth.
Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
According to 23andme’s Twitter
Image reads,
Approximately 8% of DNA is originally from viruses, which infected your ancestors and became integrated into their cells.
.. Should a retrovirus happen to infect a germ line cell – i.e., a sperm or an ovum – the retroviral DNA will be copied into the offspring’s DNA. And their offspring. That’s called an “endogenous retrovirus”. Some cause or contribute to cancers – and sometimes (for example) that DNA even gets co-opted for a useful purpose.
.. Estimates vary – many of the retroviral sequences have been modified by mutation over the aeons, making it hard to find them all – but recent estimates do come to about 8% of the human genome having a retroviral origin. There’s a fair chunk of virus in all of us.
