SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Toronto researchers have discovered that a single molecular event in our cells could hold the key to how we evolved to become the smartest animal on the planet.
Benjamin Blencowe, a professor in the University of Toronto's Donnelly Centre and Banbury Chair in Medical Research, and his team have uncovered how a small change in a protein called PTBP1 can spur the creation of neurons -- cells that make the brain -- that could have fuelled the evolution of mammalian brains to become the largest and most complex among vertebrates.
...
The key lays in the process that Blencowe's group studies, known as alternative splicing (AS), whereby gene products are assembled into proteins, which are the building blocks of life. During AS, gene fragments -- called exons -- are shuffled to make different protein shapes. It's like LEGO, where some fragments can be missing from the final protein shape.AS enables cells to make more than one protein from a single gene, so that the total number of different proteins in a cell greatly surpasses the number of available genes. A cell's ability to regulate protein diversity at any given time reflects its ability to take on different roles in the body. Blencowe's previous work showed that AS prevalence increases with vertebrate complexity. So although the genes that make bodies of vertebrates might be similar, the proteins they give rise to are far more diverse in animals such as mammals, than in birds and frogs.
So...it turns out the answer to why we're smarter than chickens is not because we don't pass hraka where we silflay.
An alternative splicing event amplifies evolutionary differences between vertebrates [abstract]
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday August 24 2015, @07:34PM
not sure if she's smarter than me, given that her only job is to sleep around the house all day and be adorable
Sounds like she is to me. ;)
And now I am reminded of one of my friends complaining that he has mice in his house and one of my other friend's responses in regards to the cat "Why do you keep feeding that fucking thing then?"
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday August 24 2015, @10:02PM
I was being rhetorical. Of course my cat is smarter than me! Yes, I can write code; yes, I can put together 50,000 words into something coherent; but she knows how to get what she wants with only a plaintive meow. Not only that, I can't train her except to come to me when I shake the bag of cat treats or knock her hair brush against something, but she has me well trained. It's a cat's life, but it's not bad to be a cat's pet, however. They are very pleasant things then they let you pet them.
I have an idea. The cat is too smart. The cat knows that if its pet human stops feeding it, it will just go find another human to adopt, knowing that this human will feed it. Why should the cat work for a living? Doesn't it do enough just by making you think that she is your cat?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.