There are many things that ready us apart from our high priest cousins , but the bounteous ( literally ) is our brains . Our oversized mind have let us chip at out a unparalleled evolutionary path , and it ’s all thanks to a single replicated cistron .
That ’s the finding of University of Washington investigator , who have identify the special role that a particular gene call SRGAP2 has played in our evolutionary story . At least doubly in the last four million year , SRGAP2 has been reduplicate in our genome . More importantly , the gene has not been replicate in the other primates , one of only 23 known genes to be uniquely duplicated .
Because duplicated genes can have a far more influential effect on the genome , those 23 genes are think to contain a big part of the key to our evolutionary variance from Pan troglodytes and other primates . It come out SRGAP2 may be the most significant of them all .
The researchers get hold that the protein created by SRGAP2 interferes with structures in the brain called filopodia . These are speculate to allow cells to move around in the brain , but the heightened presence of SRGAP2 force the cell into more streamlined , large - plate movements . The researchers mean this could have allowed us to build a much thicker brain lens cortex , which helps explain our enhanced cognitive ability .
There ’s another reason to imagine that SRGAP2 is peculiarly crucial . The investigator found that the factor was partially duplicated on chromosome 1 about 3.4 million years ago , and then that partial copy was duplicated about 2.4 million years ago . transmissible inquiry shows that the more ancient duplicate is missing from some multitude ’s genome , but the more recent copy is fixed in the human population – everyone has that in their factor .
Generally speaking , you do n’t see a gene that ’s that common unless it ’s absolutely lively to our evolutionary history . What ’s more , 2.4 million year is a comparatively short space of time for a gene to be reduplicate and restore in the genome , again indicating that whatever purpose SRGAP2 serves , it ’s very authoritative to our evolutionary history . It look like we really do have this one duplicated gene to thank for our crowing brains .
The International Congress of Human GeneticsviaScience News . Image by Guido Vrola , viaShutterstock .
BiologyEvolutionGenomicsHuman evolutionScience
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