Is Human Evolution Over? - Professor Steve Jones
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
- Eminent geneticist and scientist, Steve Jones, asks whether humans will evolve in the future: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Humans have evolved from ape-like ancestors over millions of years, of course; but also over thousands, for there are several cases in which we can identify natural selection - genetic changes in response to an environmental shift - over just a few millennia.
Professor Jones has been criticised for saying that at least in the developed world, and at least for the time being, this process is over. But natural selection depends on differences in survival and reproduction and they have, more or less, gone away. Processes quite different from those of the past will shape our genetic future.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
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Steve Jones is such a hoot. I wish I could be in the room at Gresham.
+Roedy Green
Hi, Glad you're enjoying the lectures. Just in case its not clear, you can be in the lecture hall with Professor Jones. He has three lectures this year at the Museum of London. Obviously this only works if you can get to London, but you can also follow us as we live tweet events twitter.com/greshamcollege
Find our more here: www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/professor-steve-jones
Regards
GC
I hope such lectures available online will incentivize other lecturers to improve.
really enjoyable lecture.
Great talk. The study on vitamin D was particularly interesting.
What if you're just totally wrong about aging? May 26, 2015: Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba in Japan found no difference in the amount of DNA damage between the elderly and young groups of cells. This led the researchers to propose that another form of genetic regulation, epigenetic regulation, may be responsible for the age-associated effects seen in the mitochondria. The researchers then looked for genes that might be controlled epigenetically resulting in these age-associated mitochondrial defects. Two genes that regulate glycine production in mitochondria, CGAT and SHMT2, were found. The researchers showed that by changing the regulation of these genes, they could induce defects or restore mitochondrial function in the fibroblast cell lines.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150526085138.htm
That's the best Duke of Edinburgh burn I've heard in ages.
whoa. mind blowing
48:48 Some how this always reminds that gradualism must have innumerable exceptions.
That was really great. Thanks.
47:35 Ratio of male to female variance is actually an ingenious stat to think up. Hmmm. Ratio of x to y variance more generally.
Being self taught driven by utility leaves you with these gaping knowledge holes.
They are a huge risk.
I must ponder this instructive verbiage deeply...
Let's see why his arguments are not correct:
1. Bottlenecks are less today but considering the tiny difference between races this was not a significant mechanism of human evolution
2. Mortality is reduced but other factors took the place of selection. People have fewer children so the people who do, enjoy a evolutionary advantage
3. Variance of reproductive success among males was the same prehistorically as today yet all of human evolution happened when we were hunter gatherers.
4. Mutation rates may not have increased due to industrial pollution but human evolution occurred before the industrial era. So non-industrial rates are sufficient for evolution.
5. High mortality rates do not necessarily drive adaptive evolution. Depending on the causes the high mortality could act to freeze in a maintain a very range of adaptations by permitting the survival of only the few genotypical variations that successfully cope with the causes responsible for the mortality. This is most strikingly seen when an intrinsically harmful trait is maintained because of an unrelated advantage it confers (eg.: sickle cell anemia maintained in populations due to its protection against P.Falciparum malaria).
In addition, he leaves out the arguments FOR evolution proceeding today:
The ability to rapidly adapt to varying situations (new jobs), tolerate stress, form social connections with continually changing communities throughout life, tolerate social isolation and reduced community ties, learn new complex technologies are fairly uniform and pose new selective pressures which are expected drive adaptive evolution. Many selective pressures present in modern industrialized life sure are new or different compared to the ones that were dominant prehistorically. In addition, it is almost certain that we have not identified the aspects of current life conditions and even less the conditions that may develop over the evolutionarily relevant time scale of 10s to 100s of thousands of years which will drive human evolution.
Along the line of argument in #5 above, increased life span due to better living conditions is expected to increase not decrease genetic variation in the population acting as it were a source of increased mutation rate.
31:17 achhh
As for success in spreading individual male genes one may easily multiply it by reanges of magnitude simply by donating lots of sperm to a sperm bank... .
Finally. My question has always been whether there could be another hominid species to come out of Africa the way that we did. I don’t think it’s a question of “If”.
the evolution is very important in and out class school and college in 3 different styles ecology biology fisica.
Morlocks will be the AI computers that will eventually run the planet. We will be the Eloi.
John Smith Something like that... Technological evolution is rampant and will dominate social and also likely biological evolution (through intelligent and iterative design)
So what do people think of Dr Sanford's theory about dna entropy and the eventual extinction of our species?
@Gresham College Beginning to ending 47:48:
I am mainly trained to spot contradiction in arguments and data and what is missed in the analysis.
On the one hand, we see Frank Hubbert's (of Dune fame) "leveling drift" in offspring. On the other, we see it in a new form here in the professor's lecture.
I rebut that evolution is accerlated nonetheless. Virtually any human now survives, hense diversity and the new.
The effects of overwhelming stable populations can also be defeated in a number of clever ways. Simply leave.
Hence, a new and superior branch which by definition would dominate.
You must at least address that as well as the question of its pace vs its presence (evolution's.)
It is a bit of a Star Trek narrative that given our technology has come of age.
I wonder if evolution amongst humans is really over as Professor Steve Jones suggests. What about sexual selection ?
Evolution is not over, but some processes that had been in place most of the time are in idle. At least this is what I understood from it.
Sexual selection is, I think, not so effective. While everyone is quite sure how the dream partner should be like, most end up with someone completely else. Do you agree?
A good point ! Thank you for the reply. Obviously one's dream partner is just that ; a dream. Still, it was sexual selection that produced the peacock's extraordinary plumage, and some say that our own brain developed to the degree it has not for survival but for sexual display.
Antonio Macedo
... our affectation for fashionable things (shoes, handbags, cars, smartphones) has to do with peackocks' plums obviously.
< Sexual selection is, I think, not so effective.>
It can be very powerful, or very weak, depending.
As mentioned, it has produced many adaptations, for example bright color in male birds, lion's manes, and the tendency of young human males to take a lot of risks while showing off. But when we research the situation birds, it turns out that bright color often is NOT related to mating success in any given study. It seems that sexual selection has run its course in many cases, and isn't strong at the moment.
Perhaps it has run its course, and the alleles that were favored are now fixed.
In people, men fight less for mates than they did in the past (maybe). If so, sexual selection via male-male competition may be changing away from fighting ability and towards other things (nice clothes and cars?).
There is probably not a gene for "owning a nice car" but if there are alleles for being aggressive vs accumulating stuff, the stuff allele may be winning. Since many animals face the choice of fighting vs foraging, there may well be alleles that influence such instinctual preferences, but of course this is all just brain-storming.
de êspera (°_°)
1. "natural selection depends on differences in survival and reproduction and they have, more or less, gone away."
False
2. "Processes quite different from those of the past will shape our genetic future."
True
For an example of 1, there is alleles for ability to digest lactose are selected for around the world, due to the spread of dairy products.
Example 1, no : in the past lactose intolerant children would die in greater number and then (evidently) not reproduce as well. Nowadays, being lactose intolerant doesn't impair your ability to reproduce.
Suomi mainittu ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Artificial intelligence doesn't require a computer.
I had a hard time getting past wondering if he knew his top button was undone. If he did--bad decision.
Ah ha! Are you still sweet on the man.
i hear snoring lol
Glad I am still making sperm.