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DNA evidence shows farming was not indigenous but was imported into Europe from the East

November 10, 2010

A new paper published in PLoS Biology today uses “high precision ancient DNA methods” to  create a detailed genetic picture of one of the first farming communities in Europe (from central Germany) which reveals that this ancient farming population was radically different to the nomadic populations already present in Europe.

Haak W, Balanovsky O, Sanchez JJ, Koshel S, Zaporozhchenko V, et al. (2010) Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities. PLoS Biol 8(11): e1000536. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000536

The hunter-gatherers of Europe it seems did not change rapidly to become farmers. The farmers moved in (invaded?) from the near east and some 8,000 years ago gradually dominated the scene. From Science Daily:

A team of international researchers led by ancient DNA experts from the University of Adelaide has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8000 years ago. A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

Project leader Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, says: “This overturns current thinking, which accepts that the first European farming populations were constructed largely from existing populations of hunter-gatherers, who had either rapidly learned to farm or interbred with the invaders.”

“We have finally resolved the question of who the first farmers in Europe were — invaders with revolutionary new ideas, rather than populations of Stone Age hunter-gatherers who already existed in the area,” says lead author Dr Wolfgang Haak, Senior Research Associate with ACAD at the University of Adelaide. “We have also been able to use genetic signatures to identify a potential route from the Near East and Anatolia, where farming evolved around 11,000 years ago, via south-eastern Europe and the Carpathian Basin (today’s Hungary) into Central Europe,” Dr Haak says.

The Author summary:

The transition from a hunter–gatherer existence to a sedentary farming-based lifestyle has had key consequences for human groups around the world and has profoundly shaped human societies. Originating in the Near East around 11,000 y ago, an agricultural lifestyle subsequently spread across Europe during the New Stone Age (Neolithic). Whether it was mediated by incoming farmers or driven by the transmission of innovative ideas and techniques remains a subject of continuing debate in archaeology, anthropology, and human population genetics. Ancient DNA from the earliest farmers can provide a direct view of the genetic diversity of these populations in the earliest Neolithic. Here, we compare Neolithic haplogroups and their diversity to a large database of extant European and Eurasian populations. We identified Neolithic haplotypes that left clear traces in modern populations, and the data suggest a route for the migrating farmers that extends from the Near East and Anatolia into Central Europe. When compared to indigenous hunter–gatherer populations, the unique and characteristic genetic signature of the early farmers suggests a significant demographic input from the Near East during the onset of farming in Europe.

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Natural History Museum expedition could mean “genocide” for indigenous people

November 8, 2010

From The Telegraph:

The Natural History Museum has been warned that a forthcoming trip to find hundreds of new species in the remote forests of Paraguay could risk the lives of indigenous people and the scientists.

The 100-strong expedition, one of the largest undertaken by the museum in the last 50 years, is due to set off in the next few days to explore one of the most unknown regions of the world for one month.

However the museum has been warned by campaigners that the trip could cause “genocide” for isolated tribes.

The group Iniciativa Amotocodie, that protects local indigenous people, said groups of Ayoreo Indians in the area have never come into contact with westerners before. If they come across the expedition without preparation they could catch common western viruses that could wipe out the small groups in a matter of weeks.

A statement from the group, that has been circulated online, read: “If this expedition goes ahead we will not be able to understand why you prefer to lose human lives just because the English scientists want to study plants and animals. There is too much risk: the people die in the forest frequently from catching white people’s diseases – they get infected by being close. Because the white people leave their rubbish, their clothes, or other contaminated things. It’s very serious. It’s like genocide.”

The vast area of dry forest across parts of Bolivia, Argentina as well as Paraguay, known as the Gran Chaco, is the only place in South America outside the Amazon where there are uncontacted tribes. Until about 1950 it was thought there were around 5,000 people in the area but now there are thought to be less than 150 as people leave or die out.

Richard Lane, Director of Science at the NHM, confirmed that he had received a letter from a group representing indigenous groups. “Clearly the needs of indigenous people to remain uncontacted needs to be respected and we as an institution have always respected that,” he said.

With a hundred people involved in this expedition and tramping through the jungle it is hardly a case of  being very discreet or showing very much respect for the indigenous tribes. (Does it really take one hundred people? Explorers used to go in twos.)

The naming of new species of plants in the name of protecting biodiversity seems to be rather more important than the lives and the way of life of these unfortunate tribes. That a body such as the Natural History Museum is prepared to risk genocide for the sake of finding and naming species that have not been recorded is astonishing. The species will carry on very well even if they receive no names and will probably be better off for not having any contact with the expedition (or perhaps circus would be more accurate).

The Natural History Museum would be well advised to cancel this vacation in the jungle or at least to reduce the numbers in the expedition to about two.

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Posted in Behaviour, Biodiversity, Biology, Environment, Evolution, Social Science | 2 Comments »

A special gene for camouflage

November 1, 2010

C. Zhang, Y. Song, D. A. Thompson, M. A. Madonna, G. L. Millhauser, S. Toro, Z. Varga, M. Westerfield, J. Gamse, W. Chen, R. D. Cone. Inaugural Article: Pineal-specific agouti protein regulates teleost background adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1014941107

Science Daily

 

Like other bony fish, the peacock flounder can change the color and pattern of its skin to blend into the sea floor. (Credit: Photo by Jimmie Mack)

 

Researchers led by Vanderbilt’s Dr. Roger Cone have discovered a new member of a gene family that has powerful influences on pigmentation and the regulation of body weight.

The gene is the third member of theagouti family. Two agouti genes have been identified previously in humans. One helps determine skin and hair color, and the other may play an important role in obesity and diabetes. The new gene, called agrp2, has been found exclusively in bony fish, including zebrafish, trout and salmon. The protein it encodes enables fish to change color dramatically to match their surroundings, the researchers report this week in the early edition of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“When my graduate student, Youngsup Song, discovered a third agouti protein in the fish pineal gland, an organ that regulates daily rhythms in response to light, we initially thought we had found the pathway that regulates hunger diurnally,” said Cone, chair of the Department of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Obesity and Metabolism.

“That is the mechanism that makes you hungry during the day, but not at night,” he continued. “However, Chao Zhang, a graduate student who followed up the study, ultimately discovered that this agouti protein … is involved in the rapid pigment changes that allow fish to adapt to their environment.”

This phenomenon, called background adaptation, also has been observed in mammals. The coat of the arctic hare, for example, turns from brown in summer to white camouflage against the winter snow.

In contrast to mammals that have to grow a new coat to adapt to a changing environment, fish, amphibians and reptiles can change their skin color in a matter of minutes. The first agouti gene, which produces the striped “agouti” pattern in many mammals, was discovered in 1993. The same year, Cone and his colleagues at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland reported the discovery of the gene that encoded the melanocortin-1 receptor, a key player in the pigmentation story.

In the current paper, Cone’s group reports that the newly discovered protein, AgRP2, regulates expression of the prohormone genes pmch and pmchl, precursors to melanin-concentrating hormone, which has a pigment-lightening effect. “Together, the versatile agouti proteins and melanocortin receptors are responsible for regulation of body weight, the banded patterns of mammalian coats, and even red hair in most people,” Cone said. The current work shows that agouti proteins are also involved in the camouflage mechanisms used in thousands of fish species.

Read the article.

If only the gene could be activated in humans as well!!!

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Posted in Biology, Evolution, Medicine, Science, Wildlife | 1 Comment »

The ongoing evolution of humans

October 23, 2010

DNA. image ichromatography.com

 

The Yoruba of West Africa have been exposed, historically, to the dry conditions of the Sahel on the edge of the Sahara desert. To find out whether they had evolved to cope, Andres Moreno at Stanford University in California and colleagues looked at the variation of a gene known to be involved in water retention in the kidney, called FOXI1, in DNA samples from 20 Europeans, 20 east Asians and 20 Yoruba.

(BMC Evolutionary Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-267).

The team found that 85 per cent of the Yoruba had an identical sequence of genetic information that was longer than it would have been if it was produced by random recombination and genetic shuffling. Instead, they suggest that it had been naturally selected.The length of the genetic signature suggests that the change occurred in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years, which could have coincided with the initial stages of the desertification of the Sahara. They also analysed a region of the gene in 971 samples from 39 human populations around the world, including the Yoruba, and found that the same genetic sequence was found at higher frequencies in lower latitudes. Since lower latitudes are more likely to be regions of water-stress, this suggests that the selection pressure was climate-related, says Moreno.

Humans are still evolving: the evidence

“Over the long term, if the Earth keeps warming, I would not be surprised to see genetic shifts,” says anthropological geneticist Anne Stone at Arizona State University in Tempe.

While we may look like the finished article, there is plenty of evidence that humans are still evolving. John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison even argues that population explosions and rapidly changing lifestyles are causing humans to evolve faster now than ever before. Evidence includes:

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Resource depletion is imaginary

October 19, 2010

 

Limits of growth

Doomsaying: Image by net_efekt via Flickr

 

“Humanity’s demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain”

trumpets the WWF.

Similar headlines have been common-place for the last 40 years. “The Limits to Growth” in 1972 was not the first time such dire predictions were made. They only carried on from where Malthus left off with his  An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. And before Malthus there were plenty of alarmists and doom merchants  at least as far back as mankind has lived in complex societies where opportunists could exploit people by fears of catastrophes and impending doom.

Unfortunately, today’s so-called conservationists have descended to the level of doom “merchants”. Either they are propagating fears of humanity running out of food or oil or coal or metals or water or rare earths or they are screaming about the Earth running out of biological species or of polar ice or sustainability.

But I am not convinced.

Actually, mankind destroys nothing. At the elemental level we neither create or destroy anything (except in the use of nuclear energy where some elemental transformation takes place and where some little mass is converted to energy). All the metals we use or the fuels we use are merely transformed from one compound to another and occasionally some molecules are reduced to their elemental form. The Earth as a system loses only heat (and if the global warming maniacs are to be believed we are not even losing that). The mass of the earth changes only by the accretion of meteors and the leakage of atmosphere and this change is of no material significance.

All the elements that were available remain available. The forms of compounds that we currently use and which have been created slowly by slow natural processes may well be used up. But so what? Mankind has always used what is available and when natural rubber was not enough we made synthetic rubber. We usually take what is available and transform it into the form we want. We take metal oxides, reduce them to the elemental metals and then recombine them into the qualities of steel or alloys we need. We take oil and convert it into plastics. We take plant material and make paper. We take other plant material and make oils. We take sand and make glass. We take limestone and make cement or concrete. We are a carbon-based life form. We use carbon in all its forms as diamonds and all organic materials and now as graphene for nano-materials. We take oil and make food. Nearly all the drugs we use are synthesised.

Even if we restrict ourselves to the known form of the resources we use, we cannot forget that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. We have not even begun to see what can be found there. Even the off-shore oil and gas we extract hardly scratches the (submerged) surface. We are crowding out some particular species but keep finding new ones. The number of mammals (but not necessarily species) in existence is increasing rather than reducing. The diversity of life in the sea is hardly touched.

The overwhelmingly pessimistic view of mankind and its future which drives the current-day conservationists to their creed of “stop everything” goes nowhere. “Stop the World, I wan’t to get off” is not something for me. A strategy for humanity – like any other strategy – cannot be based on “what not to do”.

I suppose it is the difference between an optimist and the doom sayers. I see no energy crisis – only some technological challenges to be met. I see no food crisis – only some tasks to be carried out, and these tasks do not need any technological breakthroughs. The Earth and the Sun will take care of climate as they see fit and our task is to adapt to whatever changes may come and not to waste our time in any futile attempt to try and control it. We could stop using all energy today and the Earth and the Sun will still cause climate change to happen and mankind is not even a bit player in that music.

I remain an optimist and I believe in the human ability to develop technology. As educational standards improve, human population will probably increase till about 2050, then reduce slightly from about 10 billion people and then stabilise at a very slow rate of growth. This development will be dynamically coupled to our rate of technological development which will continue but where we cannot predict the rate of breakthroughs appearing. A breakthrough in transportation methods (and since the invention of the modern internal combustion engine for transport in 1862, this is now overdue) or a breakthrough in food synthesising technology or finding new sources of energy (and I do not mean wind or solar) will have an obvious effect on quality of life and on rate of population growth.

A true environmentalist must be first concerned with the quality of life for humankind. The “environment” devoid of humans is no environment at all. I wish the so-called conservationists (who are not in my opinion true environmentalists) would stop telling me what not to do.

There is no resource crunch. There may come shortages of resources in the form we are used to but I have supreme confidence in our ability to develop the required technologies to keep improving on our quality of life – and to keep evolving.

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Tenacious life – a new species of snail fish found at depth of 7000m

October 14, 2010

 

The new type of snailfish was found living at a depth of 22,966ft (7,000m) in the Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean.

Snailfish found living at a depth of 22,966ft Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean. Photo: Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen

 

Hot on the heels of discovering a biological oasis of life in hot, inky-black waters at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake in the midst of hundreds of geothermal vents comes news of  a new type of snailfish found living at a depth of 22,966ft (7,000m) in the Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean.

The Telegraph reports:

The 10 inch long tadpole-shaped creature with a large head, tiny eyes and pelvic fins has adapted to living in an icy cold, pitch black environment under constant, crushing pressure. Mass groupings of cusk-eels and large crustacean scavengers were also found living in the narrow abyss despite the inhospitable conditions.

The findings, in one of the deepest places on the planet, were made by a team of marine biologists from the University of Aberdeen and experts from Japan and New Zealand. The team took part in a three-week expedition, during which they used deep-sea imaging technology to take 6,000 pictures at depths between 14,764ft (4,500m) and 26,247ft (8,000m) within the trench.

The Peru-Chile Trench

The Peru-Chile Trench: Image via Wikipedia

The mission was the seventh to take place as part of HADEEP, a collaborative research project between the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo’s Ocean Research Institute, supported by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA).

Oceanlab’s Dr Alan Jamieson, who led the expedition said these latest discoveries helped shed new light on life in the depths of the Earth. “Our findings, which revealed diverse and abundant species at depths previously thought to be void of fish, will prompt a rethink into marine populations at extreme depths,” he said.

“This expedition was prompted by our findings in 2008 and 2009 off Japan and New Zealand where we discovered new species of snailfish known as Liparids inhabiting trenches … at depths of approximately 7,000 metres – with each trench hosting its own unique species of the fish.

“To test whether these species would be found in all trenches, we repeated our experiments on the other side of the Pacific Ocean off Peru and Chile, some 6,000 miles (9,656km) from our last observations.

“What we found was that indeed there was another unique species of snailfish living at 7,000 metres – entirely new to science – which had never been caught or seen before.”

The new snailfish will not be named until it is officially confirmed as a new species.

The estimates of the number of unknown marine species may be at the top end of the range estimated between 1 million and 10 million species. However, plant and animal diversity looks insignificant compared to the sea’s micro-organisms, which may number 1 billion. Their diversity is “spectacular”.

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200 new species found in Papua New Guinea

October 6, 2010

With the rate at which new species are being found and extinct species are being rediscovered and with unknown marine species being estimated to be between 1 and 10 million and  micro-organism species thought to be in excess of one billion, I am beginning to wonder if humans are not soon going to be crowded off the planet.

From Reuters today: Some 200 news species of animals and plants, including an orange spider, a jabbing spiny-legged katydid (bush cricket) and a minute long-nosed frog, have been discovered in Papua New Guinea‘s remote jungle-clad mountains. A team of international scientists made the discoveries during a two-month expedition in the remote Nakanai and Muller mountains in 2009, Conservation International said on Wednesday. In the Nakanai mountains on New Britain island, the team found 24 new species of frogs, two new mammals, nine new species of plants, nearly 100 new insects including damselflies, katydids and ants, and approximately 100 new spiders.

new mouse genus discovered in new guinea

new mouse genus discovered in new guinea : Stephen Richards

Several of the katydids and at least one ant and one mammal are so different from any known species that they represent entirely new genera, said the scientists.

Scientific American: One of the new genera is represented by a mouse that was found in the Nakanai range at about 1,590 meters above sea level in April 2009. The rare rodent has narrow feet and looks somewhat like known prehensile-tailed species in New Guinea. But its long, half-white tail is one of the striking features that distinguishes it from others in the region.

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And Kim Jong Un may actually be Kim Jong 2 or maybe 3….?

October 5, 2010

German Expert Casts Doubt on Identity of Kim Jong Un

Kim the student in Switzerland

So-called “Kimologists” based in Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing are busy analyzing the impenetrable machinations of North Korea’s power structure. There is broad agreement that Kim Jong Il, referred to in North Korea as the “Dear Leader,” who succeeded his father Kim Il Sung (known as “Great Leader”) in 1994, suffered a stroke in 2008 and was forced to take time off governing for months.

At least one Japanese expert believes that Kim Jong Il died a long time ago and that doppelgangers are being used.

Was the fat-cheeked young man shown alongside North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il in an official photo really his son and chosen successor, Kim Jong Un?

The last few days have highlighted once again how little the world knows about the regime in Pyongyang. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, 68, summoned an extremely rare meeting of his Workers Party and presented his son Kim Jong Un, who is aged 26 or perhaps 27, as his successor.

Kim, the heir apparent

A German expert on face research claims he is not identical with the pupil shown in a widely published photo taken during his school days in Switzerland.

A Hamburg-based expert on facial research who was asked by SPIEGEL to compare several photos supposedly portraying Kim in his youth with the latest official one has come to an astonishing conclusion. There is a “high probablility that they are not one and the same person,” he said.

Many Kimologists say it doesn’t really matter who the young man is because he will be firmly embedded in a power apparatus made up of older relatives.

Read the Der Spiegel article: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,721076,00.html

He is supposed to have attended the International School of Berne incognito but even that is disputed, and Kim the heir -apparent may well not be Kim the schoolboy and maybe just the Kim who never was ……….

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How exactly is biodiversity a problem?

October 5, 2010

Yesterday The Guardian reported that

While some 230,000 marine species have been recorded there are thought to be at least 1 million species in the sea. Ian Poiner, chair of the Census of Marine Life (COML) steering committee, said: “All surface life depends on life inside and beneath the oceans. Sea life provides half of our oxygen and a lot of our food and regulates climate. We are all citizens of the sea”. To mark the end of the COML project, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) showed off the results of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life, an inventory of more than 16,000 marine species and the culmination of more than 19 trips into Antarctic waters.

In fact the total is unknown and may be as many as 10 million. The New Scientist points out:

A newly discovered copepod (Image: Jan Michels)

A newly discovered copepod (Image: Jan Michels)

“There are three to four unknown species for every known,” says Paul Snelgrove of Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John’s, Canada.

The Census has so far added 1200 new species to the tally, though that is likely to rise as over 5000 more organisms that were collected have yet to be studied or named. The new species include several that were thought to have disappeared, such as the “Jurassic shrimp”, which was believed to have died out 50 million years ago.

The Census was also able to identify those regions that are richest in diversity, which include the Gulf of Mexico and the Australian coastline. The Galapagos Islands, meanwhile, turned out to have less biodiversity than the chilly South Orkney Islands, in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.

However, plant and animal diversity looks insignificant compared to the sea’s micro-organisms, which may number 1 billion. Their diversity is “spectacular”, Snelgrove says.

Just a few days ago Science reported that

Diana Fisher and Simon Blomberg of the University of Queensland in Australia carried out a comprehensive analysis of missing and extinct mammalian species. They created a database of all 187 mammal species that have been identified as extinct or possibly extinct, then combed through the literature to find out which ones had been rediscovered. They also included what threats the species had been facing, such as habitat destruction or hunting.

(more…)

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