Thejo Kote

All the posts about results from 23andme in the last few months reminded me of a DNA analysis project by the National Geographic Society. The Genographic project is collecting data about the migratory history of the human species. It tries to determine how people ended up where they currently are from their origins in Africa (the ancestry of every human on earth can be traced back to Africa, according to the project). They had invited the general public to participate by buying a kit, and sending their DNA sample. In return, they would provide details about the origins of the participants and details of their haplogroup. Ever the willing participant in such experiments, my father had sent his DNA sample sometime in 2006 and received the results. I went back to the site to look at the results again recently in light of the renewed interest in DNA analysis.

The most interesting data obviously is the migration path from Africa, which is illustrated by the image below:

 I’ll just quote  from the Genographic Project report for more details about the haplogroup itself.

Your Y-chromosome results identify you as a member of haplogroup J2.

The genetic markers that define your ancestral history reach back roughly 60,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow your lineage to present day, ending with M172, the defining marker of haplogroup J2, and also with the markers M47 (J2a), M12 (J2e), M67 (J2f), and M92 (J2f1).

From what I understand, haplogroups are a way of identifying branches in the human family tree, going all the way back to Africa 60,000 years ago, based on the mutations of the Y-chromosome that is passed from father to son. More details about the haplogroup J2 from Wikipedia. So, how did my ancestors migrate to south India?

If you look at the map highlighting your ancestors’ route, you will see that members of haplogroup J2 carry the following Y-chromosome markers:

M168 > M89 > M304 > M172

Today, descendants of this line appear in the highest frequencies in the Middle East, North Africa, and Ethiopia, and at a much lower frequency in Europe, where it is observed exclusively in the Mediterranean area. Approximately 20 percent of the males in southern Italy carry the marker, along with ten percent of men in southern Spain.

So, most members of the haplogroup J2 migrated to the middle-east, Northern Africa and Southern Europe, but one of my ancestors separated from them at some point (maybe he was banished from the tribe ). Or, maybe many of them headed in a different direction.

One thing I’ve realised from what I’ve been reading is that genetics is a fascinating area of science, with the prospects for the future being both scary and very interesting.

Recently, I had posted about the ongoing debate about evolution and intelligent design. Today, I read an excellent article in The NYT Magazine which pretty much rips apart the idea of intelligent design by explaining with examples why the design of living creatures is not exactly intelligent.

In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Another interesting thing I learnt from this article is the emergence of a hybrid solution to the perceived problem. It proposes that intelligent design was responsible for the creation of cells that later evolved into more complicated life forms. Like I said earlier, it looks like this debate won’t end soon.

Tags – evolution, id

Recently, Wired magazine featured an article about how the theory of evolution is under threat by a new theory called intelligent design. The argument made by the theory of intelligent design is that, modern biological life is far too complex to be explained by natural selection. There must have been an intelligent designer, who conceptualized all the complicated life forms we see around us, including human beings. Who was this designer? The supporters of intelligent design do not stick their neck out and say it’s God. That’s left to the creationists.

While creationism enters the realm of religion, intelligent design, though closely related to it, purports to be science, only to be classified as a pseudoscience by the supporters of the theory of evolution. This war, or rather crusade as Wired calls it, is being fought in the last place it should be, schools and classrooms. The debate is now to decide whether students should be exposed to both theories or not. Though this issue has reared it’s head in the United States now, it will eventually spill over to other countries where creationism has its share of supporters.

This controversial topic is now in the news again because of a ruling in the US against the placement of stickers in textbooks which said “Evolution is a theory, not a fact”.

When belief and religion enter the picture, the debate about any matter rages on for a long time, and I doubt if this issue will get resolved in the near future. But, some people I’ve met have kind of convinced me that we must have evolved from apes! So, for now I’ll stick with the theory of evolution.

Here is an excellent opinion on the sticker incident in the Seattle Times.

Tags – evolution, id, creationists

Another ‘brainy’ post.

BBC News reports that thieves have stolen the remote control of an implant which helps a woman sleep. Unfortunately for her, the implant is in her brain and helps to calm a condition she suffers from known as essential tremor.

BBC News – Thieves take brain remote control

Distressing though it is for the woman, I couldn’t help but imagine the other “applications” a true remote control of the brain might have.

Imagine it’s the future… and all humans have implants in their brains, to transmit data to their doctors, as part of an Orwellian society, whatever. Obviously, even in the future we’re going to have annoying, irritating misunderstood people around us who find it difficult to comprehend the concept of public etiquette, talking loudly on phones or some such thing. Enter a device like the TV-B-Gone, a product from some future hacker which would just switch someone, anyone actually, off. Of course, it might not be totally possible to enjoy the quiet, as you’ll need to run away from the scene of the crime(?).

Another far more serious use could be in prisons, to control the inmates. Insomniacs might love such a device too. I’ll stop before you’ll want to use one on me…

eWeek has an article which discusses how recent research indicates that the internet works like the human brain.

Computer scientists studying the stability of Internet connections may someday find their research used to help patients suffering from schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease or stroke.

Recently published research indicates, for the first time, that networks in the human brain work similarly to those in the World Wide Web and other apparently unrelated networks. Thus, techniques to optimize one kind of network could potentially be applied to another.

eWeek | Does the Brain Work Like the Internet?

Who knows, further research might help secure the Internet with additional knowledge about how the brain fights the spread of viruses, considering that in both cases the infection has to spread from one computer/cell to another.

Science magazine has compiled a list of the ten key scientific breakthroughs of 2004. The discovery of water on Mars has topped the list. It’s surprising that the discovery of a new human species in Indonesia, which is second on the list, wasn’t big news at the time. You can read the BBC News report here.

But , I think Science magazine missed out on one more breakthrough of the year. Coca – cola’s brand new, highly sophisticated, NASA spacecraft technology based water purification process.