from the insert-something-witty-about-Logan-here dept.
This broken gene may have turned our ancestors into marathoners—and helped humans conquer the world
Despite our couch potato lifestyles, long-distance running is in our genes. A new study in mice pinpoints how a stretch of DNA likely turned our ancestors into marathoners, giving us the endurance to conquer territory, evade predators, and eventually dominate the planet. [...] Human ancestors first distinguished themselves from other primates by their unusual way of hunting prey. Instead of depending on a quick spurt of energy—like a cheetah—they simply outlasted antelopes and other escaping animals, chasing them until they were too exhausted to keep running. This ability would have become especially useful as the climate changed 3 million years ago, and forested areas of Africa dried up and became savannas. Lieberman and others have identified skeletal changes that helped make such long-distance running possible, like longer legs. Others have also proposed that our ancestors' loss of fur and expansion of sweat glands helped keep these runners cool.
[...] Some clues came 20 years ago, when Ajit Varki, a physician-scientist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and colleagues unearthed one of the first genetic differences between humans and chimps [DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5382.1432] [DX]: a gene called CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase (CMAH). Other primates have this gene, which helps build a sugar molecule called sialic acid that sits on cell surfaces. But humans have a broken version of CMAH, so they don't make this sugar, the team reported. Since then, Varki has implicated sialic acid in inflammation [DOI: 10.1126/science.322.5902.659] [DX] and resistance to malaria [DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5999.1586] [DX].
In the new study, Varki's team explored whether CMAH has any impact on muscles and running ability, in part because mice bred with a muscular dystrophy–like syndrome get worse when they don't have this gene. UCSD graduate student Jonathan Okerblom put mice with a normal and broken version of CMAH (akin to the human version) on small treadmills. UCSD physiologist Ellen Breen closely examined their leg muscles before and after running different distances, some after 2 weeks and some after 1 month. After training, the mice with the human version of the CMAH gene ran 12% faster and 20% longer than the other mice [DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1656] [DX], the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "Nike would pay a lot of money" for that kind of increase in performance in their sponsored athletes, Lieberman says.
Also at Discover Magazine.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday September 15 2018, @07:01AM
Oof! A genetics post on a weekend.
This isn't going to end well....
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:09AM (4 children)
Problem
Solution: transfer that gene into the couch genome and you can have your couch long-running the distance without you needing to leave it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 15 2018, @10:56AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 15 2018, @01:23PM
Best consumed sitting on a fast long distance running couch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @11:12AM (1 child)
I thought you were going to reference The Simpson's long-runnng couch gag.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 15 2018, @01:21PM
Never got into watching the Simpsons. I stopped at M.A.S.H.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:16AM (2 children)
More like millions and millions of mutations... that's the only thing that made me and you different from an amoeba.
It's good to try to popularize science but this is a horrible example. You want to make people smarter after reading your article, not even more clueless. A mutation is not what happens when a radioactive spider bites the spiderman guy but instead the basic building block of evolution. It's the very meaning of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:31AM
Oh, I feel so much more enlightened by your trivial enunciation of a thing I learnt, like, 40 years ago.
That's so profound, it's borderline mystical. It even transcends 42!!
Thanks for your today's contribution to soylentnews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @06:37PM
It sounds like just terminology from before it was possible to sequence genomes. A mutation was more or less what you'd see, because there wasn't any way of knowing what caused it. So, whether the mutation occurred in one gene or on multiple ones, there wasn't any way of knowing.
The domesticated foxes versus dogs is a fairly interesting one as the foxes themselves were specifically bred just for one trait, being friendly to humans, and not the many traits that humans bred dogs for. Probably in the next hundred years, they'll have the foxes to the point where they're suitable pets, rather than just not aggressive or fearful when dealing with people.
This is one of the issues of writing articles for non-professionals, the details usually don't fit in the article that would be required for proper accuracy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday September 15 2018, @11:01PM (1 child)
All animal and a lot of other life is descended from those which decided, in however it was in their capabilities to do so, that "Run Away! was the best first response to dangerous and potentially overwhelming situations. Those who ran furthest the fastest were likely to survive. Any genetic edge that helped that was bound to be favorable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:46AM
Don't forget the other half which was chasing prey, also there the fastest runners (swimmers, flyers...) would be the most likely to catch their meal and then go on to reproduce successfully.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @09:23AM (4 children)
I'm not convinced that our ancestors 3 million years ago actually did long distance running for hours to hunt down animals for food as a normal practice. Maybe as a ritual or to impress the females or something.
All that talk about our ability to sweat seems to overlook the real problem of a much higher water requirement.
It's much easier to make a spear than it is to make a water container that doesn't leak or break easily based on known hominid tech 3 million years ago. You could carry around the ancestors of watermelons or other high water plants I suppose but who was growing the required amounts of them? I don't think you would regularly be sweating away huge amounts of precious water if you could only easily get water from doing stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgX3ZTr2_mM [youtube.com]
A team coordinated and clever enough to deal with the water issue for regular persistence hunting would be using weapons, traps and ambushes instead and have similar success rates while using lower calories, resources and time.
Only do persistence hunting run near rivers and lakes with drinkable water? Doesn't seem to match this: "forested areas of Africa dried up and became savannas". In places with such rivers and lakes our ancestors would probably be fishing for food every day...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:15PM (1 child)
It does seem absurd even if one ignores the water problem. For example, a 150 pound (~70 kg) human hunter chasing down an animal for 4 hours (and assuming a successful hunt) has burned up somewhere around 2000-3000 calories (using this [verywellfit.com] as a stab at numbers). That's the calorie content of 0.5-0.8 kg of protein or 0.2-0.3 kg of fat just to catch the meal. Sure, with a big animal, you'll get that back, but it's an awfully big ante for a hunt that might not produce.
That's really the problem. There are much better ways once you start using that brain.
I think a more likely need for running is to keep up with a wounded animal so that you can catch it before other predators do. Not every ambush will work perfectly. Doesn't make sense to let good food run off without some sort of effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @03:21PM
Well they say persistence hunts have a high success rate. But I think these successes are usually done with water bottles or similar ;). Has anyone tested to see how well the hunters do in savanna conditions without extra water? e.g. lots of water in the morning (at the home/village) maybe a small melon or whatever an ancestral hominid would have and that's it.
Yeah possibly. Or jogging back to the village with the carcass/meat before the sun sets (those predators might be bolder and more dangerous at night). Probably easier to get water at the village. Could normally be a walk back (save energy) but if the hunters are unlucky the ambush might take longer and a jog back would be necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:29PM (1 child)
We have to remember that the water issue would also be problematic for the prey and that they can't carry pig bladders with them full of lovely thirst quenching water.
Also apparently the oldest known spears are only about 350,000 years old.
I'm not convinced they did but I'm not convinced neither that they did not. It's certainly a fact that the modern ultra runners are amazing athletes running non-stop for very long times in very hard terrains and climates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @04:10PM
The prey generally don't sweat as much and don't need as much water. Water is probably a problem BUT the prey still do manage to run for hours based on popular persistence hunting time ranges (wiki says 2-5 hours).
I'm pretty sure persistence hunting is possible but it's more risky and more time and resource intensive so I doubt it is something the most of those hominids would have done on a regular basis if they were as smart as a chimpanzee or smarter. Maybe it's what a hominid would do if it's alone and wants meat and can't catch it in other ways.
Maybe the ones with spear heads and the thrown ones but a long sharpened stick will still kill an antelope in an ambush. Even chimps use sharp sticks to kill stuff: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/innovative-female-chimps-may-have-pioneered-tool-use-hunting/ [iflscience.com]
So I'm pretty sure stabbing spears will have been around for way longer. And definitely way before they used pig bladder waterskins.
A bipedal hominid advantage is we have arms to more easily carry lots of meat home and not have to eat it and carry it in our stomachs. Nor do we need to have our young nearby so we can easily drag the carcass to them (but also putting them at risk).
So the endurance running may be more for multiple ambushes. Run many times to chase animals to ambushes and you get a large pile of meat. Stop when you get too thirsty. Walk home with meat or jog home if it's too close to sunset. Whole family/village gets to eat lots of meat = big win.