Re: In the News: Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin
- From: unrestrained_hand@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 17 Dec 2005 09:01:16 -0800
jgrisham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Jason Spaceman wrote:
> > From the article:
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > By Rick Weiss
> > Washington Post Staff Writer
> > Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A01
> >
> > Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic
> > mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in
> > humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one
> > of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's
> > greatest sources of strife.
> >
> > The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance
> > in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when
> > all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently
> > thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to
> > give rise to the lightest of the world's races.
>
> I've been expecting this.
>
> The more likely scenario is that after losing sufficient body hair, all
> humans were white.
A couple of comments.
1. While it is still not universally held, most anthropologists think
that humans evolved in Africa and spread out from there. It's not
likely that we dropped all of our fur in one generation; as we became
the hairless ape, we would have developed dark skin simultaneously as
a result.
2. There is no reason to assume that we had pale skin under our fur,
way back when. Altho it's an idea to investigate.
3. The gene identified has two variants - one is found in light-skinned
people whose ancestors were European, and the other in people who
ancestors were Asian or African. Recent genetic tracing of markers
shows pretty clearly the migration of various identified mutations in
the human genome - for modern humans, it's out of Africa.
> This would mean that white people are the least
> evolved of current homo sapiens (Can't have that, can we?).
All animals and plants currently alive are equally "evolved". If your
scenario turned out to be
supported by the evidence, a simple-minded racist would simply assert
that white skin had nothing to do with anything important, or that the
other genepools are degenerate mutants. But few people who post here
seem to think that way. Only a few of the anti-science posters have
hinted at racism, that I've seen. Well, OK, I can think of one certain
violent example, but he's an exception.
> The
> Northern European climate allowed whites to remain white, while Asians
> and Africans had to evolve protections from the sun. These traits are
> of course skin color and a thicker, wider eyelid. For the reverse to be
> true, white peoples would have retained the thicker, wider eyelid,
> which we well know didn't happen.
Why? The founder effect or sexual selection can account for numerous
small differences among human genepools.
> So unless they can account for both
> skin color and the eyelid, their scenario is just a rationalization
> that attempts to steal the most evolved status from Africans and
> Asians.
Ummm...
Most scientists do not come across as racist to me. Please don't quote
19th-century scientists to suport your implications unless you want to
quote 19th-century theologians too, for comparison.
A modern racist would claim either high-evolved status for himself, or
more degenrate mutations for "the others", depending on which one
seemed to have the most recent mutation under discussion.
I don't think you would find many geneticists who talk like this. You,
in fact, are the only one to bring this up.
>
> > Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against
> > interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a
> > vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted,
> > and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.
>
> Typical disclaimer for legal purposes.
I heard the interview with the researcher; he had some trepidations in
following this line of investigation - he knew the information would be
misinterpreted - but found it too interesting to ignore.
>
> > In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a
> > biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found
> > mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the
> > 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions
> > for making a human being.
>
> Yeah, but it's probably just the gene for red hair!
No; it's associated with dark skin. Nor is it the only gene affecting
skin color, but it is the only one identified so far.
>
> JTG 12/16/05
>
> <snip>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > J. Spaceman
Kermit
.
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- In the News: Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin
- From: Jason Spaceman
- Re: In the News: Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin
- From: jgrisham
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