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The human is "allowed" from the chimpanzee - cancer and autism

The difference between humans and chimpanzees is not only in brain size and not only genetic. It is precisely epigenetic changes that are responsible for the fact that humans are more exposed to cancer and other diseases

Chimpanzee and man. From Wikimedia - CC license
Chimpanzee and man. From Wikimedia - CC license

96% of the chimpanzee genome is identical to that of humans. It's the other four percent that cause huge differences. Researchers from Georgia Tech University led by Prof. Sujin Yee explain why humans are more exposed to diseases such as transparent cancers that rarely develop. In other words, not only did our brains evolve from our ape ancestors, but we also acquired new diseases, which shows once again that, contrary to the claim of evolution deniers, evolution itself has no direction.

In a study to be published in the September issue of the scientific journal American Journal of Human Genetics, Yee examined samples from the brains of individuals from each species. She found that the difference lies in the changes made in the DNA known as methylation, which may have contributed to phenotypic changes (visible to the eye). The research also suggests that DNA methylation plays an important role in several common human diseases including cancer and autism. "Our research identified that some human diseases may have originated from an epigenetic source, and then passed through evolution," says Yee, a researcher in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech.

"These findings, in the long run, may help develop drug targets or other ways to fight some of the human diseases."

DNA methylation changes gene expression but not the genetic information of the organism. To understand how it varies between the two sexes, Yi and her team mapped the prefrontal cortex in great detail in humans and chimpanzees. They discovered hundreds of genes showing lower levels of methylation in human brains than in chimpanzee brains. Most of them are involved in protein binding and the process of cellular metabolism.

"This list of genes includes an unusually high number of disease-related genes," Yee says. "They are associated with autism, neural tube defects and addiction to alcohol and other chemical substances. This suggests that differences in methylation between the sexes may have had significant functional consequences. They may also have been linked to the evolution of our vulnerability to several types of disease, including cancer."

to the notice of the researchers

19 תגובות

  1. Can you define what "direction for evolution" is?
    What does it mean that there is a direction for evolution and what does it mean that there is no direction for evolution?
    After all, the definition of evolution is preservation - development of the strong force/gene, and that in itself is the direction, isn't it?

    I would appreciate a correction or direction.
    Although there was a reference to it in the comments, but I couldn't understand it.

    Can anyone point to an article on the matter?
    I'd love to. Thanks.

  2. What about chimpanzees? Retarded people became chimpanzees and that's because they sinned!!!
    You people do not understand anything!!! Only the Jewish people are the people of eternity and a woman was created from my side!!!!!1
    Otherwise my life has no value and I got zero

  3. Attached is a link to the article that first raised the question for me

    http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/health/1.1801762 .

    As mentioned: I make the following assumptions:
    1. A cancer tumor reflects a complex biological system and cells with an impressive survival capacity.
    2. The theory of tumor formation holds that a cancerous tumor develops as a result of a defect in the control mechanisms of healthy cell replication (as a result of old age or environmental catalysts that cause cancer).
    3. A cancerous tumor with its many complex properties develops anew every time without the ability to pass these properties on to future generations (since the body carrying the tumor is destined for destruction)
    4. It is unlikely that the evolutionary pressure system is the same in every body that bears a tumor and causes the formation of identical and complex characteristics of a tumor between different carriers.
    5. Therefore, I return to my basic question: what is the evolutionary explanation for the formation of a biological system called a cancer tumor.
    6. In light of what I read last week and in light of some of the responses, I suspect that one of the paradigms (evolution, cancer formation) requires changes.

  4. I just now noticed Uri's question and his follow-up response:
    https://www.hayadan.org.il/human-chimp-genetic-differences-250812/comment-page-1/#comment-357528

    Ori,
    I will assume you asked your question seriously.
    Aging processes are a natural part of life. Any system, and especially a system whose existence requires complex balances, at some point will accumulate damages to such an extent that essential parts of the system will begin to falsify, function poorly, or stop functioning at all. Collectively, these phenomena are called aging. Depending on the place/region/system where the main damage occurs, the typical aging disease will be manifested. It can be on the cognitive level like Alzheimer's, and it can be on the physical level like diabetes or cancer (in the end everything is organic/physical of course).
    Cancer occurs when significant enough damage to the control processes of cell division accumulates. In fact, a "cancerous" state is the default, and many control mechanisms need to exist properly to prevent this normal state. These mechanisms can be impaired at many different stages, and all of them will lead to a similar result, that is, the appearance of a cancerous tumor. The situation is similar to the operation of a car. As long as everything is fine, the vehicle drives, but it is enough for one of the essential components to break down, and you have a disabled vehicle. Many faults can disable the vehicle.

    As mentioned above, weathering processes occur at a fairly old age, long after the same individual has produced offspring, so the appearance of cancer at an advanced age is not expected to undergo evolution, unless that individual still influences the survival of his offspring, for example by financial support or perhaps education, in which case pressure can arise Selection in favor of resistance to cancer (ie in favor of better cell division control mechanisms and this even though the individual no longer reproduces by itself, this is an interesting question!).

  5. The black man, the white man, and the yellow man are a uniform sequence in diversity. There is a very large tribe in Japan - if I'm not mistaken they are called Ino - who look white like Europeans, but a genetic test revealed that they are close to the rest of the Japanese, which shows that even today the change is taking place. Apart from that, as you know, the different races interbreed.
    As Camila wrote there is no specific first person, at a certain moment we stopped being Homo erectus and became Homo Sapiens, after enough traits accumulated. It is really possible that this happened more than once with different groups of Homo erectus, but in any case it is an arbitrary decision whether to call them Homo erectus or already Homo sapiens.

  6. Leaving Africa is a completely unfounded theory
    The white man and the yellow man are not descendants of the black man
    The different human races evolved from local great apes that lived on every continent

  7. There are still enough people who do not have genes in their genetic pool that will develop cancer
    and to Ori.

    There are many different types of cancer

    1) There is cancer that frequently develops in the body and the immune system suppresses it
    Until the system weakens as a result of old age / disease and then the immune system
    Can't suppress him anymore.

    2) There is a cancer that originates in the genetics of the person that erupts only at the age of 70
    If so, the person will have time to reproduce before the disease attacks him
    And such a type is inherited, as was already explained to you before.

    3) Nature is so complex and wonderful, see life cycle here
    of a worm that paralyzes snails and makes them stand out in the field
    And causes the snail to be eaten by a bird, where the fungus spreads over my face
    A huge area when it is emitted through the bird's feces and is contagious
    New snails. (not for those with a sensitive stomach)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWB_COSUXMw

  8. to a threat user,
    Evolution, at least in part of its natural selection, actually has a direction but it changes frequently. The direction is determined by the environmental conditions (which dictate the selection conditions that act mainly on the phenotype). If, for example, there is global warming and in a certain region this means that it is warmer and drier, this automatically means that there is expected to be a relative advantage for individuals in which there are (probably by chance) physiological structures, biochemical pathways or even behavior, which allows them to produce more offspring that carry these traits. Given a relatively constant environment with clear characteristics (such as extreme dryness and salinity conditions), we can expect that given replicating creatures that undergo evolution, we can find in them, over the generations, various "patents" that are adaptations for living in such cells. But why go that far, every process of agricultural improvement in plants and farm animals and every process of selection aimed at certain traits such as size, color, rate or aggression in dogs for example, are an example of evolution with a predetermined direction (at least in one trait). Since the environment changes quite quickly (in terms of evolutionary time), it seems that sometimes evolution is capricious, sometimes it "develops" eyes and then degenerates them (there are many such examples in almost every mechanism/organ you can think of). The reason for this is, as mentioned, changes in the environmental conditions which entail changes in the essence of the solutions relevant to that environment. What is so beautiful is that evolution always works on the model that has existed so far, so that unlike intelligent design which would have simply designed the creature to fit a given environment from the start, evolution is a patchwork, a tower of changes upon changes some of which you can see come and go during development the embryo of a certain individual. When the environmental conditions change, the creatures (such as species) cannot develop except on the foundations of the structures that exist in their possession in each generation. Wings, for example, may be a great advantage for small vertebrates, but the reptile-like form from which birds evolved was different in many ways from the ancestors of bats, and indeed in both cases the "patents" found are very different from each other, even though the end result - the ability to fly, is the same (a process known as Convergence = convergence into a structure with a similar function). In the same way, the clear advantage of a hydrodynamic body in a watery medium has unsurprisingly resulted in creatures that are precisely their adaptation, when there is a correlation between the degree of hydrodynamic adaptation and the speeds reached by those creatures respectively.

    From the way you asked your second question it seems as if you are hoping for a certain answer... I'm not so clear why. It would be correct to say that there is a gradual development in certain features (it depends a bit on definition). If we take certain adaptations that can be compared to engineering design and objective performance, we can say that for example there was a gradual development in the avian wing which allows for high flight speed. It is still necessary to remember that fast flight is only one feature that may be useful and that in other conditions it may be that slow flight will be better, therefore, as a general rule, evolution creates more variety than it creates a gradual development of a certain feature. Another example of a well-known and well-documented gradual development is the size of the brain.
    Other examples of gradual development are in situations of co-evolution, for example in predator and prey relationships (such as cheetah and impala) or a flower and its pollinator, when there is dependence but also a conflict of interests and then a kind of arms race is created, so that a certain trait may develop and be perfected gradually (for example speed running). But even here, there is no obligation that there will not be other solutions (for example an ambush or a relatively slow chase until exhaustion), therefore evolution more than anything, in most cases results in a variety of organisms.
    If I didn't understand your question correctly, please rephrase and ask again.

  9. Regarding autism and methylation...on the one hand, a low level of methylation (meaning lack of transcription prevention?) of certain genes that are related to autism encourages autism in humans more than in monkeys. On the other hand, silencing of the RORA gene by excess methylation appears to be one of the causes of autism. And in the brains of autistic children, a low amount of the aforementioned gene was discovered. (From the above article https://www.hayadan.org.il/is-autism-curable-204107/)

  10. Guy - there is a bank of concepts that in my limited powers I cannot imitate - it's called Wikipedia. What you are asking for requires more investigative work and maintenance of the site before each article is uploaded. This will reduce the number of articles.
    Regarding 2. The site is built on volunteers. If you have volunteers who know the topics in depth and are willing to write such articles, please.

  11. It is clear that one large positive trait such as the development of the brain overshadows negative traits acquired during the transition between the sexes, but one should not just look at the glass half full, it is a complex process, which has effects in all directions, and the whole plus incidental luck - creates the chance of survival. It is not a long upward journey as thought in the 19th century, and as the opponents of evolution claim (well that's not wisdom, they distort it anyway).
    After all, there are creatures that have moved to live in underground caves and their vision has deteriorated.
    There are creatures from bacteria and above that were complex will become simpler. Even in the evolution of horses as described in the Natural History Museum of New York, there is no clear direction, on the way to today's horse we started from an animal the size of a dog, there were increases and decreases in size between the species in the chain, the end result does not always indicate the path.

  12. my father
    The claim or the conclusion that evolution has no direction is interesting, is it true to say that there really is no gradual "development".
    which increases the chance of survival during the evolution between the different creatures..

  13. Ori,

    Short and to the point answer:

    You are misunderstanding the cancer cell, evolution and biology. There is a lot of accessible information, also on the net.
    If you notice, at the end of the article there is a link to experts in the field. This is a good start.
    I'm not trying to brag and preach to you. In fact, I also started to find out following your comment, even though I have quite a wide acquaintance. If it really interests you, start researching.

    Avi Bilzovsky,

    Following Uri's response - a small optimization proposal for the website:
    1. Concept bank - in addition to links to relevant knowledge, sources and websites, maybe it is also possible to get links to technical concepts such as cancer cell, DNA, nebula, etc... at the end of the article?
    2. I also suggested before - maybe a series of articles in the style of "how it really works"?

  14. This is exactly the point. A cancerous tumor has complex properties, and very high survival abilities. (both in defense against chemical substances and in the ability to "trick" the immune system) Where did these properties come from? The non-inheritance of the genetic properties of the tumor is not carried out and is not passed on to future generations. So this is my question. How does the evolutionary theory explain the formation of such a complex system as a cancerous tumor (with similar properties of tumors in different bodies), when in practice the genetic properties of the tumor are not inherited. I would appreciate an explanation if there is one.

  15. If someone gets some kind of cancer at the age of 70, after they already have grandchildren, how exactly does it help not to transfer the genetic components of the disease to the next generation?

  16. I did not understand what is the evolutionary explanation for the development of cancer? After all, we know that the ability of cancer cells to survive against the immune system is very high, the ability of these cells to organize is complex, but these abilities are not inherited, because the cancer cells cause the body that carries them to die. A cancerous tumor develops initially every time anew and the interesting thing is that the tumor develops in a similar way in different physical environments. So where did this complexity come from? And another point - what is the evolutionary purpose of a cancerous tumor? After all, "cancer genes are not passed from generation to generation, but as mentioned lead to the death of the body that carries them.

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