Mysteries of Humanity: Lacking Information in Human Genome Could Be What Differentiates Humans From Others

According to a new study, the information that the human genome lacks could have been crucial to humankind's development and to the differentiation of humans from others.

Human Genome

Science Daily reports that the recent findings help in bridging the gap regarding the evolutionary changes in the human genome. Though the additions to the human genome have been huge study focuses, there has been less attention granted to what it lacks.

The recent study conducted by a Yale team was published in the Science journal. For this study, the researchers utilized an in-depth genomic drive to look into primate DNA. By doing so, they demonstrated the lack of around 10,000 genetic data bits in the course of humans' evolutionary history that differentiates humans from chimpanzees. Science Daily notes that some of these deleted bits are closely linked to the genes involved in cognitive and neuronal functions. In fact, one of these is linked to cell formation for the developing brain.

The Yale team used a technology known as MPRA (Massively Parallel Reporter Assays). This technology screens and measures thousands of multi-species genetic functions at the same time.

Through their procedures, the researchers observed that the missing DNA pieces can be found in other mammalian genomes. Their absence is also common for all humans.

The authors suggest that the uniform absence of these pieces in all humans suggests how important they are from an evolutionary perspective. They further suggest that such pieces could have conferred a biological advantage of some sort.

While certain genetic sequences found in other animals were absent in humans, the researchers say that these deletions could have enabled the creation of new genetic encodings. These new codings could have led to the elimination of elements that would typically disable some genes.

Humans' Evolutionary History

Steven Relly, the study's senior author and an assistant genetics professor from the Yale School of Medicine, explains that they often think that new body functions are linked to DNA additions. However, their recent work demonstrates that the deletion of genetic codes may lead to unique traits that make humans distinct from others, as reported by Phys.

Relly explains that the genetic data deletion led to impacts that are likened to three characters (n't) being removed from the word "isn't" in order to form the word "is." He adds that these deletions could modify instructions and help explain the complex cognition and bigger brain size of humans.

Their study was one of the several papers published under the Zoonomia project. This project is a global research collaboration that works toward cataloging mammalian genome variations. This is done by comparing and contrasting DNA sequences of around 240 existing mammals.

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