Scientists have uncovered the mystery of transformation of a monkey into a man

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Ученые раскрыли тайну перевоплощения обезьяны в человекаGeneticists have discovered new genes that allowed our ancestors to find the mind.

Scientists said that the doubling of the “junk” DNA has enabled human ancestors embrace the mind and make the first steps towards the creation of tools. This happened about three million years ago, said researchers at a meeting of the American society of human genetics.

In recent years, scientists have discovered several hundred genes responsible for brain development and differ in structure in the genomes of humans and chimpanzees. However, they have not been able to find those DNA regions that are responsible for unusually large compared to the rest of the body, the size of our brain. Therefore, neuroscientists and geneticists for quite a long time suspect the reason for the striking differences between the two types lies not so much in the structure of genes, but their in a different activity.

Two years ago, scientists found the first practical confirmation of this hypothesis by grafting parts of “junk” DNA of man, the management activity of neighboring genes in the genome of the mouse embryo. This procedure significantly increased the size of the brain of the embryo, however, the scientists failed to follow its further development, as the experiment was stopped for ethical reasons.

Now, researchers have once again confirmed this hypothesis and revealed several new sections of “junk” DNA related to the development of typically human features of the brain. They studied a fairly long stretches of DNA that is repeated several times in the human genome, but missing in the genetic material of primates or other animals.

Many of these sequences are almost identical to each other, which scientists previously believed them to be sequencing errors and I just deleted them from the data.

It turned out that they played an important role in the human genome and that distinguishes humans and primates. A total of geneticists were able to access about two hundreds of these repeating sections, or otherwise to influence the development of the human brain.

For example, transplantation of “junk” DNA surrounding the gene SRGAP2С, conductor the growth of neurons, significantly increased the size of the prefrontal cortex and increased number of connections between neurons in the brain of the embryo of the mouse. This gene and the associated “junk” DNA appeared about three million years ago, when people began to develop tools and become bipedal.

Previously, scientists found that the genes of Neanderthals cause depression, nicotine addiction and diseases of the skin in modern humans.

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