Thursday, February 21, 2013

"Our Robust Intellect"


Hey everyone,

I am monitoring Trends in Genetics this semester for our class.  I found a paper released on Monday February 18th that is sort of relevant to some of our class discussions (FOXP2 gene, transposon mutagenesis and scientists bashing the works of other scientists are found here).

In a nutshell, this paper was a response to a paper by Gerald Crabtree, who claimed that our human intellect is inevitably declining over time due to retrotransposition events that cause a loss of heterozygousity in a beneficial variant of neuron-related genes.  Crabtree claims that this, therefore, makes intellect less heritable.  This paper proves that there is no link between changing intellect and heritability.

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