Researchers Uncover Brain Patterns That Differentiate Humans From Chimpanzees

University of California, San Diego ^ | April 11, 2002 | Staff

[Nebullis]

A team of international researchers from Germany, the Netherlands and San Diego may have shed light on why chimps and humans are so genetically similar (nearly 99 percent of shared DNA sequences), and yet so mentally different.

In a study published in the April 12, 2002 issue of the journal Science, the scientists noted that the striking difference between these primate cousins is most evident in their brains. The disparity appears to be the result of evolutionary differences in gene and protein expression, the manner in which coded information in genes is activated in the brain, then converted into proteins that carry out many cellular functions.

The brain differences are more a matter of quantity than quality. Differences in the amount of gene and protein expression, rather than differences in the structure of the genes or proteins themselves, distinguish the two species.

More here

and here (login may be required).

[Cvengr]

Amazing what can be deduced from a little trace of scat.

[FairWitness]

In landmark papers published in 1998 by Varki and Muchmore, the two reported on the first known biochemical and genetic difference between people and chimps ? a missing oxygen atom in humans, in a cell-surface carbohydrate molecule called sialic acid.

Very poorly written. Many sequence differences were obviously known before 1998.

[Nebullis]

If I understand that rightly, is the DNA the cause or is it an effect of our characteristics?

It's both. DNA has, simply, been in the public spotlight because of the genome project. The emphasis on actual expression is much more difficult. The field of interdisciplinary fields of proteomics and bioinformatics have been underway for over a decade and some fields of biology, like development have always had a greater emphasis on expression. It's all related, one simply can't be separated from the other.

One variously sees articles pop up, like "The gene is dead, long live the gene."

[gore3000]

Probably just bad grammer. He should have said that "the rate of change...of humans was sped up" rather than implying that the humans did it conciously. The way it is stated would actually be anti-darwinian,

It is more than bad grammar. It is trying to bow to Darwinism but not having the vaguest idea of how to explain the experiment in Darwinian terms. Or perhaps he was making it obvious that the experiment was a disproof of Darwinism while letting the yokels who supervise and pay their bills think that they were abiding by the party line. I really hate to think that people who could do such work could be so stupid as to make such a statement - in writing yet, for a published journal.

[gore3000]

One variously sees articles pop up, like "The gene is dead, long live the gene."

Well, no doubt man is a material being and there needs to be a material basis for the operation of his faculties. However, the alteration of genetic behavior according to particular circumstances and environmental cues, seems totally anti-Darwinian. Also the uniqueness of these actions in humans seems to show a break with what evolution would predict. While the researchers try to tow the party line and say this is merely a difference of degree, not of quality, the opposite seems to be the case.

[krb]

the scientists noted that the striking difference between these primate cousins is most evident in their brains

No sh!t, sherlock.

[Nick Danger]

I wonder how much of our tax money it took for them to figure out that people are different from chimps?

What part of "Most funding came from the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung and the Max Planck Gesellschaft. The work at UCSD and the VA was supported by a grant from the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation of New York." didn't you understand?

[RightWhale]

fields of proteomics and bioinformatics have been underway for over a decade

Yeah, well I've been working on this for 2 days now, probably 15 minutes total, and I've already discovered 2 new words, neither of which I know what it means. :)

[Nebullis]

FYI

[gore3000]

What part of "

What part of man is a unique species and it has been known by all (except Darwinists) for a long time do you not understand?

[Nebullis]

It's the new frontier!

[Scully]

Thanks for the ping!

[Scully]

Bump to RadioAstronomer's list!

[AndrewC]

"The human brain is a very, very complicated organ and this study validates that."

Thanks for the posting and notification. Sometimes I wonder though. At the moment I believe it can be safely stated that the human brain is the most complicated object known. It dreams of dreams.

[AndrewC]

Humanity: its all in the mind

Human Genome Meeting,
Edinburgh, April 2001

Humanity: its all in the mind

Genetic activity in the brain gives us the edge over chimps.
24 April 2001

HELEN PEARSON

A human skull (top) houses more gene activity than does a chimp skull (bottom)

© D. Roberts / SPL

The difference between chimps and humans is all in the mind. It is differences in our brain's gene activity that really sets us apart from chimps, delegates at the Human Genome Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, heard this week.

"I'm interested in what makes me human," explains Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. After sequencing 3 million letters of the chimp genome and comparing them with the human draft, his group reasoned that DNA sequence can't be it: only 1.3% of letters are different.

So using tiny 'gene chips' with 20,000 human genes dotted on them, they measured the levels of gene activity, or 'transcription', in our brain, liver and blood. They compared these transcription snapshots -- the 'transcriptome' -- with similar snapshots of our close relative the chimp and an evolutionarily more distant relative, the rhesus macaque monkey.

"Liver and blood reflect how the species are related," Pääbo found. In these tissues, as expected, the human gene activity pattern was pretty similar to that of the chimp, and different from the macaque.

The brain showed a different picture: chimp and human transcription patterns are poles apart. "The [human] brain has accelerated usage of genes," explains Paabo.

The genomes of all mammals are so similar that "it's hard to understand how they can produce such different animals", says Sue Povey, who works on human gene mapping at University College London in England. If their genes are alike, it's probably changes in when, where and how active they are that drives the differences between species, she agrees.

[green team 1999]

so who designed the modern humans???
are these the same that have being watching for hundreds of years??

[Nick Danger]

What part of man is a unique species and

This is the first time I have ever been invited to participate in a religious argument about tax dollars. I think I'll pass.

[AndrewC]

so who designed the modern humans???

Psa 139:13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

Psa 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully [and] wonderfully made: marvellous [are] thy works; and [that] my soul knoweth right well.

Psa 139:15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, [and] curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Psa 139:16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all [my members] were written, [which] in continuance were fashioned, when [as yet there was] none of them.