Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 247 posts

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#191

Post by jbotz »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #178
makeitdouble wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wings are so fascinating. Flying animals have their whole body, from their brain, digestive system, down to their bones internal structure and function [0] optimized for flight. That's where we see species giving up flight ability to get a stronger body, and I wonder what it would take for us to do the reverse to be able to use these wings in any way. [0] https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptation..…

We'd definitely have to give up long gestation and with that, live birth, and probably a good amount of cranial capacity due to weight and energy budget tradeoffs.

Huh? Bats have most of those those, more than most other mammals their size.

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#192

Post by ChainOfFools »

jbotz wrote: post #191
ChainOfFools wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd definitely have to give up long gestation and with that, live birth, and probably a good amount of cranial capacity due to weight and energy budget tradeoffs.

Huh? Bats have most of those those, more than most other mammals their size.

Bats do not have the cranial size of humans; that's kind of the point. They may have a loosely comparable cranium to body mass proportion, but allometric mass scaling matters with respect to physiological adaptation, quite a lot[0].

[0] https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#193

Post by b112 »

junon wrote: post #143
b112 wrote: post #124

Meanwhile, 140k years ago, our 3rd civilization approached our current level of tech. Fashion designers, specifically a group lead by Argot the Great, decided the tail made pants difficult, and broke the lay of suit jackets. So they hired radicals to genetically engineer a retrovirus, to remove the tail. This worked, but due to unconsidered balance issues, all tail devoid children lost the capability for bipedal bala…

What is this referencing?

Nothing. I just wrote it because it seemed amusing.

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#194

Post by username3 »

npstr wrote: post #170
KennyBlanken wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely is human genetics this simple. For ages geneticists thought large swaths of the human genome were "junk" and over time more and more of it has been proven to have a purpose or function, it just wasn't readily apparent for various reasons. Think of the human genome as sort of the ultimate dependency hell...

Nature does not refactor. There's the laryngeal nerve somewhere in the neck of mammals that has to go around a blood vessel. On Giraffes, this runs all the way down the neck, around said blood vessel, than back up, all that just to connect two places in the upper neck that are inches apart. Evolution writes the ultimate spaghetti code. More info: https://berto-meister.blogspot.com/2011/08/unintelligent-des...

[flagged]

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#195

Post by Zetobal »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #164
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #139

I believe this suggests that we could CRISPR an embryo to knock-out the offending Alu element in the TBXT gene and the child will develop a tail.

Rarely is human genetics this simple. For ages geneticists thought large swaths of the human genome were "junk" and over time more and more of it has been proven to have a purpose or function, it just wasn't readily apparent for various reasons. Think of the human genome as sort of the ultimate dependency hell...

There still is a lot of non-coding dna in there.

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#196

Post by 3seashells »

Zetobal wrote: post #195
KennyBlanken wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely is human genetics this simple. For ages geneticists thought large swaths of the human genome were "junk" and over time more and more of it has been proven to have a purpose or function, it just wasn't readily apparent for various reasons. Think of the human genome as sort of the ultimate dependency hell...

There still is a lot of non-coding dna in there.

[dead]

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#198

Post by ssijak »

ekaryotic wrote: post #70
pfdietz wrote: post #29

It takes metabolic resources to grow a tail. If the benefit was less than the cost, mutations that prevented the tail from growing were selected for.

And they're unhygenic. Sheep farmers for instance routinely cut the tails of their flock because it is difficult to shear and becomes a breeding ground for blowfly larvae. That said, i saw a movie called Shallow Hal(2001) which had a scene in which a man was shown to have a tail. Now it may have been cgi, but it made me think that there must be a minority of humans with that mutation.

Its not because of the tail but because of the farms. Sad state of how we do farming at scale.

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#199

Post by dingdingdang »

npstr wrote: post #170
KennyBlanken wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely is human genetics this simple. For ages geneticists thought large swaths of the human genome were "junk" and over time more and more of it has been proven to have a purpose or function, it just wasn't readily apparent for various reasons. Think of the human genome as sort of the ultimate dependency hell...

Nature does not refactor. There's the laryngeal nerve somewhere in the neck of mammals that has to go around a blood vessel. On Giraffes, this runs all the way down the neck, around said blood vessel, than back up, all that just to connect two places in the upper neck that are inches apart. Evolution writes the ultimate spaghetti code. More info: https://berto-meister.blogspot.com/2011/08/unintelligent-des...

Nature does not refactor, except when it does as in the case of going from 48 to 46 chromosomes (great apes->humans). Nice write-up and slightly novel hypothesis at: https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Re: Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

#200

Post by Phemist »

Grimblewald wrote: post #188
npstr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature does not refactor. There's the laryngeal nerve somewhere in the neck of mammals that has to go around a blood vessel. On Giraffes, this runs all the way down the neck, around said blood vessel, than back up, all that just to connect two places in the upper neck that are inches apart. Evolution writes the ultimate spaghetti code. More info: https://berto-meister.blogspot.com/2011/08/unintelligent-des...

noodly its appendage, sphagetti its code, in its image we are made, amen.

*ramen
Post reply on HN