your question is preposterous!
You may have heard that humans are 99.9% the same as each other. Well, not anymore.
New research is showing that we are less alike than this. There isn’t an exact number yet but the new number is probably somewhere between 99.0 and 99.9%.
What happened? What have scientists been finding that makes us all less alike?
They’ve been discovering that we don’t just have differences within our genes. We also have differences in the number of copies of our genes as well.
This forces us to rethink how genetics works, how we do genetic testing, what makes us different from a chimpanzee, why some of us are more prone to illness and some of us more resistant, etc. This new research is changing how we think about how our DNA works and why we are who we are. This is huge.
The idea that we are all 99.9% the same came from looking for differences in our DNA letter by letter. We see the newly discovered differences by looking at big chunks of our DNA all at once. Let’s use a cookbook analogy to show you what I am talking about here. Our DNA has 6 billion letters cut up into 46 different strings of “text” (called chromosomes). Imagine that this DNA is a library of 46 cookbooks.
Just like cookbooks, our chromosomes have recipes too. The recipes are made of sets of instructions called genes. And the genes are written in three letter words called codons.
For example:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Here are a couple of single letter differences that completely change the meaning of this recipe:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with silk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Now instead of a glass of chocolate milk, you get a glass of chocolate silk. Or in the second case, a very weak glass of chocolate milk.
This is how DNA works too. A change in a letter can cause a change in how a gene gets used. Or whether it gets used at all.
The newly discovered changes, called copy number variants (CNVs), are different than this. They are more like repeats of the same instructions. For example, imagine the recipe now says:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Now you’re going to get a stronger chocolate milk. Or imagine the whole recipe just repeats.
Now youget twice as much chocolate milk.
Until a few years ago, scientists thought that most of our differences came from small changes in our DNA. The idea was that every 1000 letters or so, you and I have a different letter.
These 6 million differences made me distinct from you.
But over the past few years, scientists have started to notice changes where big chunks of DNA
are repeated. Or missing.
As they looked harder, more and more of these changes became apparent. As of November 2006, more than 600 of these CNVs had been identified that covered 104 million DNA letters (called bases). That’s 4% of our DNA!
Now a new paper in the journal Nature shows there are even more than this. The researchers found 1447 of these big changes that spanned 360 million letters. Now we’re up to 12% of all of our DNA.
And because of how they did the work, this is probably an underestimate. In other words, even more of our DNA probably has changes like these.
A lot of this repeated DNA includes genes. Which means people not only have differences within
heir genes, but also in the number of their genes. We are definitely not as alike as we oncebelieved.
Researchers have already sequenced mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 12 Neanderthals. This is DNA from the cell's powerhouses, and which is passed down from mother to child.
While mtDNA has confirmed that Neanderthals were indeed different from us, the information gleaned from it is limited.
2007-01-15 01:27:00
·
answer #1
·
answered by Sabine 6
·
1⤊
1⤋
yes, they definitely would be in conflict with Homo spines. H. neanderthalis and H. sapiens occupy the same niche in the world so it is obvious that they would be in conflict. They compete for the same resources in the same area. Through whatever circumstances humans won out in this arrangement leaving Neanderthals and all the other various species in the genus homo (there were several) to gradually become extinct.
Whether this past could be defined as war is questionable. It could have just been that one group wound up with all the resources and the other died out. But in a society like we have in the modern world this situation has all the components that would bring about war, namely competition between similar groups for resources and land.
Frankly, in a war like this, it seems most likely that the Neanderthals would win seeing as the are larger, more robust, have larger brains, and better technology. Yet somehow Homo sapiens won. A fun underdog story.
2007-01-14 20:14:20
·
answer #2
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
They believe that neanderthals interbred with homosapiens I doubt there was a war. Neanderthals were only different because
of their environment they ate a high protein diet and got very Little sunlight most of them had rickets. Because of the lack of vitamin d they were short and developed odd bone characteristics
the intelligence neanderthal man had was probably similar to ours
we may have fought some but the most likely case is interbreeding and diet changes that caused evolution to what we are today.
2007-01-14 20:13:42
·
answer #3
·
answered by Anonymous
·
2⤊
1⤋
Nobody is really sure what became of them but one theory suggest that homosapiens hunted the Neanderthals down and killed them off. Early form of genocide. Ironic that this was just the beginning of murder and mayhem. Perhaps the Neanderthals would have inhabited this earth in friendlier way with less war, destruction and hate. Survival of the fittest and the most destructive.
2007-01-14 22:29:38
·
answer #4
·
answered by Deirdre O 7
·
1⤊
1⤋
Neanderthals are alive and living in the coal regions of Pennsylvania. Yes, they do war with the homosapiens. The homosapiens drag them kicking and screaming into the new century and the Neanderthals hate it!!!!!!!!!! Neanderthals=Hazelton!!!!
2007-01-14 23:07:48
·
answer #5
·
answered by Shauna 1
·
0⤊
1⤋
No because we homosapiens would use our more evolved brains to invent technology that would render them defenseless.
2007-01-14 15:27:54
·
answer #6
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
No. No war. We would have only relocated them for their own good to some unwanted, God-forsaken piece of land that no-one wants, anyhow.
2007-01-14 16:56:38
·
answer #7
·
answered by Anonymous
·
1⤊
0⤋
Uh...per chance you should bypass back to college. (and, no longer only on your atrocious English) Neanderthals were no longer smarter than homo-sapiens. that is why THEY died out, and homo-sapiens advanced.
2016-10-31 03:06:25
·
answer #8
·
answered by ? 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
they probably made love not war, and thats why we're really
'homosapithals'
2007-01-14 13:58:18
·
answer #9
·
answered by geezer 51 5
·
1⤊
0⤋