Thread: Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?

"When leading biologists were unraveling the sequence of the human genome in the late 1990s, they ran a pool on the number of genes contained in the 3 billion base pairs that make up our DNA. Few bets came close. The conventional wisdom a decade or so ago was that we need about 100,000 genes to carry out the myriad cellular processes that keep us functioning. But it turns out that we have only about 25,000 genes--about the same number as a tiny flowering plant called Arabidopsis and barely more than the worm Caenorhabditis elegans."

"That big surprise reinforced a growing realization among geneticists: Our genomes and those of other mammals are far more flexible and complicated than they once seemed. The old notion of one gene/one protein has gone by the board: It is now clear that many genes can make more than one protein. Regulatory proteins, RNA, noncoding bits of DNA, even chemical and structural alterations of the genome itself control how, where, and when genes are expressed. Figuring out how all these elements work together to choreograph gene expression is one of the central challenges facing biologists."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/80

Are there any alternative science views that shed light on the relatively small number of genes in the human genome?

I don't know about anternate scientific theories, but I do know an analogous case. Current-day computer operating systems are not written from scratch; new code is simply patched onto older clde, which is why your computer now needs 100 GB or disk space and 1 GB of RAM to do the same thing a computer of 20 years ago could do with 40 MB of disk space and 1 MB of RAM.

Apparently, the building up of the human and other genomes has proceeded in much the same way.

ram makes it fast as well so are humans getting faster?

We've certainly got better at handling more and more data more swiftly over time. Whether that is an artifact of the wan our genetics has been built up is anyone's guess.

thats because we've got so much shit to remember, fuck! before you can even eat

now a days
you must work for food,things that happen before you eat, give your money to the tax man, save for a time when your old, then buy food at the same time paying more tax, because it added value :roll:
then you get to your home which your either renting or paying a morgage to have a roof over your head, then pay tax again for having shelter and for going to the toilet, then you get to cook your food, pay more tax for cooking it, sit down eat.

in the past
you would leave your mothers arms find a piece of land make shelter hunt gather eat simple

before you know it humans will have huge heads with all the garabage the eyes pick up and store in your brain, just storing it there like all the crap you have on your computer
simplier, give me a pc with windows 98 and browser and i will download onto a external hard drive, i like having a pea brain hats sit nice

Originally Posted by whoknows

ram makes it fast as well so are humans getting faster?

it depends

I think one gene is all ya need is love

Originally Posted by whoknows

thats because we've got so much shit to remember, fuck! before you can even eat

now a days
you must work for food,things that happen before you eat, give your money to the tax man, save for a time when your old, then buy food at the same time paying more tax, because it added value :roll:
then you get to your home which your either renting or paying a morgage to have a roof over your head, then pay tax again for having shelter and for going to the toilet, then you get to cook your food, pay more tax for cooking it, sit down eat.

in the past
you would leave your mothers arms find a piece of land make shelter hunt gather eat simple

before you know it humans will have huge heads with all the garabage the eyes pick up and store in your brain, just storing it there like all the crap you have on your computer
simplier, give me a pc with windows 98 and browser and i will download onto a external hard drive, i like having a pea brain hats sit nice

Lol hats sit nice lol