Talk:Human evolutionary genetics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Genetics This article is part of WikiProject Genetics, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to genetics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this page, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human Genetic History, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of genetic genealogy, genetics-based population history, and associated theory and methods. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Contents

[edit] Why a new article?

The article on human evolution is focused on the fossil record. This is fine. However, considering the vast amount of molecular data on the human evolution today (e.g. comparative genomics, genetics of great apes, mitochondrial Eve, selection of particular loci, etc.) it is time to start a site dedicated on looking at human evolution from the molecular perspective.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Molgen (talk • contribs) 08:47, 26 August 2006

[edit] To-do list

[edit] Genetic diversity

  • Genetic diversity in humans great apes.
  • Genetic diversity in different humans populations.
    • mtDNA
    • Y chromosome
    • X chromosome
    • autosomes
  • Traces of migration

[edit] Mechanism of molecular evolution

  • Protein evolution
  • Gene expression
  • Less-is-more hypothesis
  • RNA evolution

[edit] Selection in human evolution

  • FOXP2
  • Gene loss of CCR5
  • Gene loss of Caspase12
  • Skin color determining loci
  • Blood groups
  • Prion protein
  • MHC genes
  • ....

[edit] Improving current chapters

  • more data on karyotype
  • more detailed phylogeny

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Molgen (talk • contribs) 08:59, 26 August 2006

[edit] Note removed

Removed from article:

Please note that this chapter will not deal with the question of identifying the genetic changes that made us human.

Does this indicate a cut -n- paste job or what? Vsmith 01:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


It seems a bit suspicious, esp considering the size and complexity of the firt edit of this page, but obviously a lot of work has gone into it, I don't think the graphs are copied. I don't know enough about the genetics to work on rewording much though. Nowimnthing 01:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sequence divergence between humans and apes

Quoted from article: "The complete mapping of the chimp genome in the summer of 2005 showed the genetic difference with humans to be 1.23% (ie 87.77% similarity)."

1.23% + 87.77% = 89.00% So what happened to the remaining 11% ? Or was 87.77 a calculation error for 98.77 ? Greensburger 13:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, more detective work from us Wikipedians leads to the conclusion that the text was scanned, and either includes typos from the original, or maybe OCR errors. Conclusion: there is probably excellent verification for the article, perhaps too excellent. We should check the sources cited. Anyone near a biological library on a regular basis? Alastair Haines 16:11, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Under Divergence times: "The authors consider ...". Sounds like a textbook to me. Learning a lot though! Alastair Haines 16:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chimpanzee terminology

I am partially re-reverting the last edit so that the term "chimpanzee" is used to include both bonobos and chimpanzees. It may be that in some places the word "chimpanzee" is used to refer to common chimps, but an encyclopedia should not encourage incorrect terminology. The chimpanzee article is very clear that the term refers to the genus, and the word "Common Chimpanzee" is not difficult to understand. — Epastore (talk) 17:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Using the genus pan is not incorrect terminology. See the bonobo page for the confusion the term chimpanzee can cause. With pan there is no confusion. Yes we know that pan=chimpanzee, but why the fight against pan when it is more clear to the layman? Again it is not incorrect terminology to use pan. Nowimnthing (talk) 22:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the article works quite well the way it is. Instead of accommodating ignorance, it works to correct ignorance by making clear the distinction between chimpanzee and common chimpanzee. Also, it is consistent not only with the rest of Wikipedia, but also with itself. Otherwise, it would refer to orangutans as "two species of genus Pongo." — Epastore (talk) 19:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Humans have been classified by biologists as great apes and are one of the species in the family Hominidae along with only a few other species. The Hominidae include two distinct species of chimpanzee: Pan paniscus (bonobos) and Pan troglodytes (common chimpanzees), two species of gorillas (Gorilla gorilla and Gorilla graueri), and two species of orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus and Pongo abelii).
I still don't think it is accomodating ignorance to emphasize the differences between bonobo and common chimpanzees, but I won't argue anymore on it if no one else has any objections. To me both ways it was written were technically right, it is just a debate on which is clearer per Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles. Nowimnthing (talk) 15:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)