More Madonna, Less Jesus

Family Tree vs Treesitters

“What Makes Us Human?” asks the current cover story in Scientific American. I would be attracted to this story anyway, but am particularly interested because much of the research reported was done just up the hill from my office at the Genome Project at UCSC. The author, Katherine Pollard, is using bioinformatics to study those and compare the genome sequences in human and chimps that change the fastest. Of the 1% of DNA that is different between us and our nearest relatives, what does that DNA do? What makes us human? So far, Pollard has found DNA sequences that relate to the folding of the neocortex, speech centers in the brain, digestion of starch, brain size, digestion of milk sugar of domesticated animals, and certain changes in the fetal development of the wrist and thumb.

The Genome Project is currently in the Applied Sciences building, one of the oldest on campus. It is planned to be one of the occupants of the biomedical building
across the street. This is the building that was protested by treesitters for more than a year.

I’m not in favor of Pharma or logging a parking lot. But this research is amazing. Why not do it in a redwood forest?