Did this gene give modern human brains their edge? | Hacker News Reader

Did this gene give modern human brains their edge?

nature.com

5 pointsrntn3 comments

I'd like to start a petition that we engineer a chimp with human TKTL1 and human FOXP2 genes! Sounds like we're only about 3 or 4 SNPs away, and if a chimp had a denser neocortex and a brain structure more suitable to human-like speech (and the corresponding spatial organization/awareness)... I'm just saying, a real-life Planet of the Apes doesn't have to end in disaster, we could just embrace our cousins as equals :)

I got interested in genetic engineering based on this specific idea from a Ben Bova sci fi book some 35 years ago (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/302503.Exiled_from_Earth). There's an primate that has been genetically engineered to speak (they also had to edit some genes to make the throat more capable of human vocalizations). I read that and kind of looked at the front cover of my Biology book, which had a picture of a tobacco plant with a luciferase gene cloned in (a gene from fireflies, in plants, will make the plant glow).

Turns out doing actual experiments like this is far more complicated, ethically as well as technologically, than even many scientists appreciate.

As someone with a background in biomedical engineering, who once planned to research the development of gene therapies for cancer treatments: yes, definitely :)

But we do know the basics, and our ability to synthesize, excise, and replace specific genetic sequences is quite sophisticated nowadays. So while there is some technical consideration regarding implementation details, the bigger barrier to gene editing experiments is the ethics. For instance, I mentioned FOXP2, and as it turns out, we've already done the experiments of engineering mice with human FOXP2 genes (which is how we learned that, in addition to language, it's quite important in spatial awareness).

While modifying a chimp comes with its own technical considerations, we've already modified monkeys in 2001 and then again in 2014, and FOXP2 is more compatible with chimps than mice, so... it's really far more about the ethics of such a thing.

Now, I was joking in my comment, but part of me absolutely would love to say "screw the anthropocentric ethics, as long as you're not hurting anyone, MAKE THE CHIMP SMARTER!" :D

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