First Contact

December 10, 2007:  excerpt from: Scientific American Magazine

Analysis of common patterns of genetic variation reveals that humans have been evolving faster in recent history

By David Biello

Homo sapiens sapiens has spread across the globe and increased vastly in numbers over the past 50,000 years or so—from an estimated five million in 9000 B.C. to roughly 6.5 billion today. More people means more opportunity for mutations to creep into the basic human genome and new research confirms that in the past 10,000 years a host of changes to everything from digestion to bones has been taking place.

“We found very many human genes undergoing selection,” says anthropologist Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, a member of the team that analyzed the 3.9 million DNA sequences* showing the most variation. “Most are very recent, so much so that the rate of human evolution over the past few thousand years is far greater than it has been over the past few million years.”

“We believe that this can be explained by an increase in the strength of selection as people became agriculturalists—a major ecological change—and a vast increase in the number of favorable mutations as agriculture led to increased population size,” he adds.

Roughly 10,000 years ago, humanity made the transition from living off the land to actively raising crops and domesticated animals. Because this concentrated populations, diseases such as malaria, smallpox and tuberculosis, among others, became more virulent. At the same time, the new agriculturally based diet offered its own challenges—including iron deficiency from lack of meat, cavities and, ultimately, shorter stature due to poor nutrition, says anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, another team member.

“Their bodies and teeth shrank. Their brains shrank, too,” he adds. “But they started to get new alleles [alternative gene forms] that helped them digest the food more efficiently.

Artists use microbiology as a medium for art

By Zareena Hussain
STAFF REPORTER

They are a community of two; artists whose medium is the science of molecular biology. With projects that range from seeing how E. coli respond to jazz to trying to put a map of the Milky Way into the ear of a transgenic mouse, apprentice Andrew Zaretsky and unofficial mentor Joe Davis have found their niche in one of the world’s most prestigious centers for biological research, the laboratories at MIT.

For both, their work in biology is a labor of love, or more precisely obsession. While there are a handful of area artists who use their incomes as research technicians to support separate and distinct careers as artists, Zaretsky and Davis are among a proud few for whom their art is science and their science, art. Neither Davis nor Zaretsky are supported by the MIT Biology Department. For instance, Zaretsky, a Master of Fine Arts graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, supports his work as a bioartist by teaching classes in digital imaging.

To neither is their choice to leap into the world of science a sacrifice. “There are so many things going on in genetics right now that are better than most art,” says Zaretsky, “green mice, plants with luciferase, antennapedia. I think sometimes I should give scientists art awards.”

Zaretsky followed Davis here to Cambridge this year after being inspired by one of Davis’ talks in Chicago. (Davis is on somewhat of a personal crusade to bring more artists into the fold of modern biology.)

Bacterial appreciation of music

Zaretsky now spends his days learning the rudiments of modern biology, not only from his research advisor Professor of Biology Arnold S.

“the bottom line is, genes do NOT control our biology, that an assumption made years ago that was never even proven scientifically - it just seemed so correct that we bought the story … if the mechanism actually worked according to the textbooks, ie. if the genes control biology, then at least 120,000 genes would be required to make a human. but when the human genome projects results were in, … it was discovered that 2/3rds of the genes (needed to support their model) were missing. Its not that the genes were missing, it was the understanding that was wrong.”

“We have to come to a new way of understanding biology. This ‘new’ understanding has actually already been in the leading edge of science for 10 years now. It takes at least 10 or 15 years for science to take a fact from its first inception and get it out into the public so that the people can understand it. That means anything in current textbooks is at least 10 or 15 years old. what your going to hear tonight is whats going to be the future textbooks. ”

-Bruce Lipton in the Biology of Perception

Gary Schneider

Tumor Suppressor, Gene (MLL) on Chromosome 11 and on the Nucleus, 1997

toned gelatin silver print; 29 x 31 in., each of 4 panels
(detail) Courtesy of JGS, Inc.

In 1996, I was approached to make work in response to the Human Genome Project. I decided to marry my obsession with biology and portraiture. My mother had just died of cancer and I wanted to know if I had a genetic predisposition. The Tumor Suppressor Gene on Chromosome 11, the specimen prepared by Dr. Dorothy Warburton, was the first of fourteen images that would become my Genetic Self-Portrait. I explored images harvested from my own biology, sometimes scientific, sometimes whimsical. It became, in its totality, my emotional response to the issue of privacy in the new World of Genome