Thursday, October 27, 2011

Genetic Scaffolding

Those who argue the existence of complete genetic superiority have little understanding of enzymes - most individuals have rare genes that code for unique enzymatic features. FOXP2 is a protein that affects language and is present with a handful of the amino acids out of the hundreds in its structure different between species; when the human FOXP2 gene is given to mice, they emit a wider variety of sonic patterns.1

Women have more massive chromosomes (with DNA comprising a lot of that mass)2; this makes them more epigenetically versatile, as the body turns off and on genes to maintain homeostasis and adapt to environmental change.

Barbara McClintock discovered that sections of DNA called transposons migrate to different sites on chromosomes. As we can see from transposon migration's influence on chromophore expression among her botanical subjects, the same genes may have different functions depending on their chromosomal location. In fact, it is the accumulation of mutations over time which results in the taxonomical features of species.

1Sapolsky, Robert. "Molecular Genetics I." Human Behavioral Biologyy. Stanford Courseworks. Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. .
2 Ridley, M. (2006). Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. New York: Harper Perennial.

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