Shiraz Janjua, Associate Producer
Over at Wired, an article about the accelerated speed at which humans are evolving.
“People like to think of modern human biology, and especially mental biology, as being the result of selections that took place 100,000 years ago,” said University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn. “But our research shows that humans are still under selection, not just for things like disease resistance but for cognitive abilities.” Lahn recently published the results of a study demonstrating that two key genes connected to brain size are currently under rapid selection in populations throughout the globe. “The jury is still out on what this means because we aren’t entirely sure what these genes do,” said Lahn. “It’s possible they just control size and shape of the brain, rather than cognition. But the data is pretty compelling that the brain is evolving.” Some radical thinkers suggest human evolution needs to move even faster, with a little help from science.
And a really freaky episode of Radiolab also explores the consequences of genetic engineering.
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