Human Accelerated Region 1

Posted by apollinaire 12 hours ago

Comments

Comment by yubblegum 3 hours ago

> HAR1A is active in the developing human brain between the 7th and 18th gestational weeks.

Anyone know of a resource that layouts the temporal activation patterns for all the genes for the life cycle of a human being?

Comment by flufluflufluffy 25 minutes ago

As others have said, a complete dataset for that is basically impossible. You would have to monitor every cell type in an individual from the moment of conception until death. Maybe in a couple hundred years we’ll have nanotech robots that could do that, and our overall morals and ideas of what constitutes ethical research will have changed enough that we allow the creation of such humans with these robots inside them.

Comment by tgbugs 2 hours ago

Let's assume that you mean activation patterns at the level of single cells. Aside from the ethical issues which make it virtually impossible to obtain the full set of data, there is also the fact that the exact timing of expression is one of the major ways in which development produces variability in phenotype and so can vary wildly between individuals. The closest we have right now might be HUBMAP [0] or HCA [1], but I don't think that those had as objectives covering multiple developmental timepoints.

0. https://portal.hubmapconsortium.org/ 1. https://data.humancellatlas.org/

Comment by stenl 6 minutes ago

My group published a cell atlas of the developing human brain in 2023, giving gene expression in single cells from postconception week 5 to 13. It’s on github: https://github.com/linnarsson-lab/developing-human-brain

The NIH BRAIN initiative is working on the next generation of that, covering more timepoints and better spatial data.

Comment by yubblegum 54 minutes ago

Thanks!

Comment by bonsai_spool 2 hours ago

This can't be done reliably but you may want to look at Tabula Sapiens which doe some of what you'd like. It's not an obvious problem in lots of ways.

Comment by yubblegum 2 hours ago

Thanks. Suprised no one has made a visualization (even if it has gaps).

> It's not an obvious problem in lots of ways.

Care to expand on this?

Link for others:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl4896

https://maayanlab.cloud/Harmonizome/dataset/Tabula+Sapiens+G...

Comment by red75prime 9 hours ago

Interesting. So, the human brain is the scaled-up monkey brain with significant architectural changes.

Comment by timdiggerm 3 hours ago

What did you think it was before you read this brief Wikipedia article?

Comment by graemep 2 hours ago

Of course it is, and you could say the same with regard to mammalian brains in general. However the divergence starts very early in development (seven weeks) so is very big and very significant. By the time a human is born the brain is very different from a monkey's.

Comment by utopiah 8 hours ago

What was the alternative?

Comment by lukeify 4 hours ago

We didn’t have any. The project manager set it at 3 story points.

Comment by red75prime 8 hours ago

Scaling-up without significant architectural changes.

Comment by mapleoin 8 hours ago

Or significant architectural changes without scaling up.

Comment by ahartmetz 1 hour ago

Like birds, let's say? There have been some articles on HN about how crows can be so intelligent with such a small (absolute size) brain.

Comment by Nevermark 6 hours ago

Or a single magic mutation.

And if we ran an experiment where we gave it to some apes…

Comment by cluckindan 5 hours ago

Let’s observe their reactions to a big slab of obsidian.

Comment by curiousObject 4 hours ago

Evolution would design the alternative to be something slightly less capable than the minimum. /s

Really, the likelihood is that these mutations must have had an impact that far outweighs their space in the genome.

That’s how all our close competition got murdered by Homo Sapiens. Just significant difference in mental abilities.

Comment by xattt 3 hours ago

There has to be a car analogy for this.

Comment by tclancy 3 hours ago

Which is why we think we're the center of the universe.

Comment by thesuperevil 9 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by samrus 9 hours ago

Implies intelligent design

I think its rather some mutations that produced more reelin and created the most successful animal in earth's history

Comment by Joker_vD 6 hours ago

I'd really rather liked it if that supposedly "intelligent" designer took a bit more time at designing the urogenital tract of human males.

Comment by lexicality 5 hours ago

I'd like it if the vagus nerve didn't do a loop around my neck for no particular reason. (Giraffes would probably like that even more)

Comment by dingdongditchme 3 hours ago

Is that a big concern? I've been pretty happy with my vagus nerve functionality until now... although I have not given it much thought to be fair.

Comment by _joel 3 hours ago

I'm going to stick my neck out and say no.

Comment by codeulike 5 hours ago

mine seems ok what version are you on

Comment by ceejayoz 4 hours ago

Y'all get firmware updates?!

Comment by ccozan 1 hour ago

I hope we don't vibe-evoluate....

Comment by ahartmetz 1 hour ago

It's actually worse, but with robust unit tests.

Comment by shmeeed 6 hours ago

What's wrong with it?

Comment by MyelinatedT 4 hours ago

Separation of functions/concerns is not great, for starters.

The testes are dangerously exposed, the plumbing is convoluted and failure-prone (and doesn’t recover well from mechanical insults).

The prostate, which serves no function outside of reproduction, lies inline with the urethra and quite consistently loses flexibility and becomes enlarged with age, causing all sorts of structural issues impacting basic urological function.

Female reproductive vs urinary anatomy is largely physiologically distinct (proximity and UTI risk notwithstanding). Though plenty of room for improvement there too — starting with endometrial tissue being far too prolific. Fun fact: endometrial tissue can migrate to the brain and cause haemorrhaging in severe cases of endometriosis.

Plenty of room for improvement across the board, I’d say!

Comment by hackrmn 5 hours ago

Hey, $DEITY did its absolute best with the constraints and the requirements. But hey, can't please everyone apparently. Be happy you can relieve yourself well past the intended warranty period. The parts were designed to be easily _aftermarket_ replaceable with sufficient advances in technology, retaining the fundamental design without changes.

Comment by Miraltar 8 hours ago

The most successful animal by what metric?

Comment by menno-dot-ai 8 hours ago

Tetris high scores, obviously

Comment by WarmWash 55 minutes ago

Mother nature hates weak things that die (that's why they get eliminated), so if we can make it to interplanetary species before killing ourselves, that would be a pretty huge sign of success. At least on mother natures benchmark.

Comment by totomz 7 hours ago

Some of us don't spend days looking for food, don't die of cold, and survive the flu...

aaand we have Quake and Comand&Conquer - Red Alert

Comment by tomxor 6 hours ago

> aaand we have Quake and Comand&Conquer - Red Alert

Agreed, it would seem that evolutionary biology peaked in the late 90s then

Comment by randallsquared 5 hours ago

As related in the documentary _The Matrix_.

Comment by Nevermark 6 hours ago

The most successful at communicating their view that they are the most successful. Whether they are or not. But that means they are. By that metric.

Has another animal proposed they are more successful by a different metric?

Crickets?

Comment by vintermann 5 hours ago

> The most successful at communicating their view that they are the most successful

To who? Other humans?

It's seagull mating season where I am, and I don't speak seagull, but I'm pretty sure one of the things they're trying to convey to their fellow seagulls is that they're extremely successful.

Can't argue with it either. They're very much alive, which is the best you can be in this particular competition.

Comment by robbomacrae 6 hours ago

You sound like you’ve never been disdainfully stared at by a cat..

Really interesting article though. I’m very hopeful AI can help work out how all these things interact.

Comment by pegasus 5 hours ago

So, the most successful at arrogance? In other words, the least successful at humility? Ironically, since humble and human share a common root. Just playing devil's advocate here, but what you propose is not a good metric to maximize.

Comment by dingdongditchme 3 hours ago

Corn, albeit not an animal has been pretty successful in terms of number of individuals. Their bi-pedal underlings have cleared swathes of land and take meticulous care of their well-being so they can bask in the sun undisturbed.

Comment by ArekDymalski 2 hours ago

Until they are cut down and bombarded with micro waves by the very same bi-pedal underlings.

Comment by incognito124 4 hours ago

I fail to see that, it's simply one of all other random mutations, it's just that this one has a big downstream effect of enabling other more complex mutations

Comment by kryptiskt 1 hour ago

You're positing the existence of a far more advanced lifeform than merely a clever monkey with pretensions, which then somehow created said monkeys. That's like saying that it's easy to become a millionaire, just start with a billion dollars.

That's not an explanation, you just replaced a problem with another harder one.

Comment by woadwarrior01 6 hours ago

Merely implies a very good fitness function.

Comment by littlestymaar 5 hours ago

Yes. Though according this fitness function we're not necessarily more successful than a jellyfish or a tapeworm.

Comment by somewhatgoated 5 hours ago

Arguably much less successful since jellyfish have been around 700+ million years ands it’s not clear if humans will make it even the next couple thousand. But the jury is still out on that one