Genetics - Measuring natural selection on humans

Main Category: Genetics
Article Date: 26 Oct 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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How fast are humans evolving? Carlos Bustamante and his colleagues provide an insight on this question by analysing genetic data from 39 individual people and from chimpanzees.

In their paper, which appears this week in Nature, the team reports that 9% of more than 3,000 examined regions show evidence of rapid amino acid evolution.

The study, which analysed more than 11,000 genes, shows that certain gene types - such as those that influence gene transcription - show a propensity to evolve rapidly, whereas others - those that make cytoskeletal proteins - are especially prone to negative selection.

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