Attack of the Small-Jawed, Blue Eyed Mutants!

Jennifer Palmer

It was recently proven by scientists in Copenhagen that every blue-eyed person in the world shares a common ancestor. The first blue-eyed humans appeared about 6-10,000 years ago--their eye color was the result of a genetic mutation, the addition of a superfluous "switch" that nearly turns off the flow of melanin to the iris. This particular "shuffling" of human chromosomes has since been widely adapted throughout the world. The discovery supports the theory that random mutations are the real triggers of evolution--a reversal of how evolution was originally thought to have worked. Instead of an environmental context providing the recipe for genetic improvements, pure chance allows for a myriad of mutations to appear that are either promoted or suppressed by natural selection according to whether they provide any survival advantages.

What could be the possible advantage of having blue eyes? In 2006, Norwegian scientists ran experiments in which they asked blue-eyed men to examine photographs of various women and rate the degree to which they found them attractive. The data showed that blue-eyed men tended to find blue-eyed women more attractive. The scientists theorized that given the fact that only two blue-eyed people could know that they would definitely have a blue-eyed baby, the advantage to a blue-eyed male reproducing with a blue-eyed female might be that the male would have more certain evidence that the resulting child belonged to him. This shouldn't seem too surprising given that humans have created many systems to cut back on the chance of a male expending energy taking care of children who aren't his own: everything from the institution of marriage to the passing down of the father's last name to DNA paternity test results are based on this need for clarity--the latter making for thousands of mini-dramas that roll like tumbleweed through the desert of daytime network programming.

Another possibility is that the mutated blue-eyed gene was passed along by brown-eyed people who carried it unknowingly. Since the blue-eyed gene is recessive and genes come in pairs, a person who carried both would have brown eyes. Eventually, however, a brown-eyed person who had the gene would reproduce with another brown-eyed person who had the gene and each would pass it along to their offspring, who would have blue eyes. Imagine the surprise for the parents when that happened! We don't know what hidden genetic secrets we're masking with the ones that appear. Even now, when it's possible to go to a website such as 23andme.com to arrange to receive a detailed description of your own personal genome, there are as of yet many mystery genes with unknown functions. Some of us may be coded with brave new abilities that are waiting to be activated in our offspring--should we end up mating with someone who happened to have the corresponding string. Another possibility is that some of these hidden functionalities appear over time, corresponding with other biological and psychological events in an individual's life. Either way you interpret it, the idea that we carry within us the blueprint for future human culture is very exciting--a beautiful mélange of sci-fi and religious mythology turned reality.

Scientists found little variation in the genes neighboring the mutated, eye color gene on its chromosome which points to it likely being a very recent adaptation. The speed with which blue eyes have proliferated supports another recent revelation about human evolution: the pace of it is getting faster, not slower as scientists had originally believed:

By examining more than 3 million variants of DNA in 269 people, researchers identified about 1,800 genes that have been widely adopted in relatively recent times because they offer some evolutionary benefit.

Until recently, anthropologists believed that evolutionary pressure on humans eased after the transition to a more stable agrarian lifestyle. But in the last few years, they realized the opposite was true -- diseases swept through societies in which large groups lived in close quarters for a long time.

Altogether, the recent genetic changes account for 7% of the human genome, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The advantage of all but about 100 of the genes remains a mystery, said University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks, who led the study. But the research team was able to conclude that infectious diseases and the introduction of new foods were the primary reasons that some genes swept through populations with such speed.

"If there were not a mismatch between the population and the environment, there wouldn't be any selection," Hawks said. "Dietary changes, disease changes -- those create circumstances where selection can happen."

The old way of thinking about evolutionary progress assumed that since we'd found our way out of the jungle and created cultures as stabilizing structures, the necessity for adaptive change would be less. And yet, thanks in large part to random mutations, the richness of genetic variation continues to abound. In addition, we're reproducing more successfully than ever before as a species, and so a greater amount of genetic difference has the chance to be adapted. This isn't just in certain parts of the world--it's been found that the pace of genetic change has sped up in every geographical area, including the most "comfortable" places in Europe and America.

Another reason for the sped-up pace of evolution is that the stabilizing improvements of modern society have, ironically, set the stage for widespread natural selection brought about by disease. In cities where millions of people live in close proximity to one another, it's only a matter of time before large outbreaks sweep across populations, decimating demographics, with only small subsets surviving whose members happen to have a genetically-based immunity. This resistance is then passed down to the survivor's offspring.

The fact that disease and mutation have a greater impact on evolution than natural selection seems to contradict long standing notions of human progress. The truth about mutation's starring role should make us reconsider our entire notion of a "mistake." The so-called "normals" think of themselves as leading civilization's "progress" when the truth is that our history got its greatest jump starts from those individuals who were different from everyone around them: the outcasts, freaks, and weirdos. There is even evidence that the development of our over-sized brains, which turned us into the thinking people that we are today, was made possible by a genetic mutation that caused its recipients to be born with smaller jaws and thereby more room for brains. What was essentially a defect led the way to life as we know it.

There is much debate about whether this was the actual evolutionary scenario, but the possibility is fascinating to consider. Just imagine: an entire society of jocks running around biting one another with their super strong jaws and then these freaky looking guys show up with small jaws and big brains...which consequently must have allowed them to think up strategies to get the food AND the girl despite their lack of a jaw as a weapon.

As a greater number of mutations makes its way onto the scene, we have to remain mindful as thinking people concerned about the future not to judge that which is different as wrong or sick. That is not to say that there aren't genetic diseases that cause great suffering and impede a person's quality of life. But in the case of some genetic mutations, it isn't clear whether they are beneficial or not.

For instance, the set of symptoms known as autism makes it difficult for those it effects to communicate with others, which along with a greater propensity towards digestive sicknesses, tends to deny them a high quality of life. That said, some autistic people exhibit "savant" behaviors in which the individual is able to complete complicated mental feats such as advanced math or statistical computations in a matter of seconds. Might it be the case that an autistic person's difficulty with normal communication is because he or she is "wired" to receive language frequencies on a hyper plane? Perhaps this wiring gives them the ability (lacking in "normals") to grasp the secret language of inanimate objects such as furniture and non-entities like numbers and symbols? Attention deficit disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are other so-called "disorders" recently discovered as being likely based on genetic mutations.

While a lot has been said about the rise in the numbers of kids with ADD and ADHD, most of it is along the lines of "curing" or containing it. Heavy duty pharmaceuticals are often given out to kids under the age of 10 despite the possibility of serious side effects, in order to force them to achieve what is deemed as being of paramount importance: the ability to concentrate and follow the rules and guidelines of a traditional education. What if the issue isn't that these disorders are hampering a kid's ability to succeed, but are actually the adaptations of mutations that provide them with the tools necessary to succeed in the frantic pace of today's information driven, around-the-clock, media-snack bite consumer culture?

If scientists proceeded from the understanding that all mutation is undesirable and instead worked to instigate man made controls over the evolution of our own blueprints, we'd risk missing out on the genetic innovations that chance can provide to us. If autistic people actually represent a whole new way of thinking, aren't we doing ourselves an injustice as well when we rush to make them "normal" like everyone else?

Luckily, there is already so much mutation-driven variation in the world that even if all mutations were somehow stopped from here on in, the variations set in motion by those that already do exist would continue their iterations for several millennia. The human gene code is not unlike the Amazon River basin--it contains a rich variety of potentiality-anything perhaps from cures to major diseases, age prevention, and brain enhancement, to the ability to sustain a greater level of shared consciousness.

Now that scientists have embarked on the monumental endeavor of creating a 3-D map of the human brain, we are at the verge of being able to pinpoint which genes are active in which areas of the brain. As we do this, the goal should be to remember that there is no such thing as a mistake. Perhaps an individual's lack of balance brought about by having an extra copy of a certain gene also carries the added functionality of providing the relatively rare resistance to the next super plague, a fact no one will know until the killer bug hits. While scientists are working to define the advantages of each adapted gene, they can't define advantages that they don't already know...in the same way that the disappearing rain forest could hold the keys to a deeper understanding of ourselves and this planet, the same must be said about our genetic code.