Ancient Ancestors Had More DNA Than We Do Now: Have we Devolved?

[Levina]

Tell me about it. I still need to do lot of evolving. Some bit's need shaving off. Some bits need extentions. Then I will come back here as "Superman"

Yes you must "evolve".

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Humans now have more evolved Brain and less muscles than Neanderthals.

 

[Sneaker]

The "largest DNA" (whatever the hell it means) is in Amoeba. It means that we became more efficient. Like computer codes.. average programmer writes 10 line of code to accomplish a task, a brilliant programmer does a better job with 5 line of code. In the end, final results matter. We survived, they didn't (for evolutionary dead-end species like Neanderthal)... Oh, BTW, there is no such thing as "devolution" it is either evolution (adopt/change and survive) or extinction...

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

does that not happen in other species ?

I mean the dna that gives an organism the highest chances of survival is the one that goes on. Individual organisms with dna that is not as likely to survive just dies out. It's like fine tuning. The useless bits have been shaved off...

Maybe like this. Ancient Humans have had to think a lot even for Hunting. As people progressed, technologies developed to such a extent, that it has handicapped human ability to think for themselves.

Even for small logic, instead of thinking 2 minutes, we resort to instant googling. Isnt in devolving? @Kashmiri Pandit

 

[scholseys]

Its the quality not quantity, stupid.

 

[Levina]

Not exactly, only thing that seems to evolve now is our intelligence. One reason is humans tend to create/modify habitats suitable to them instead of adusting to it. We are simply fine tuning the env we live instead of body.

You can live in a desert or snowy land but still work in 25Celsius cooled env. If the entire area gets flooded you wont evolve gills but instead end up being on a boat. There will come a time when humans can no more cheat the nature. We have a price to pay like dinosaurs did.

The reason why dinosaurs don't exist anymore is because the climate changed faster than the dinosaurs evolved.
Au contraire human beings have the power of knowledge to sustain some amount of climate change.
And I see evolution and destruction as a part of a cycle.

 

[Indika]

climate changed faster than the dinosaurs evolved.

Well i bet it dint happen overnight it must have taken atleast 200-300years , the same amount of time we can give ourselves to enter self destruct mode.

power of knowledge to sustain some amount of climate change.

Climate is beginning to change once it hits the inflexion point we will see the big change. will we be there to witness it ?nope. A flood today in chennai can become a deluge in bangalore next year and catastrophic disaster after 5 years.

As nat geo would put it "Disasters dont happen all of a sudden there are series/chain of events that leads to it". Its just we are not picking up the events, by the time we pickup it will too late.

 

[Levina]

As nat geo would put it "Disasters dont happen all of a sudden there are series/chain of events that leads to it". Its just we are not picking up the events, by the time we pickup it will too late.

 

[ALexxy87]

The "largest DNA" (whatever the hell it means) is in Amoeba. It means that we became more efficient. Like computer codes.. average programmer writes 10 line of code to accomplish a task, a brilliant programmer does a better job with 5 line of code. In the end, final results matter. We survived, they didn't (for evolutionary dead-end species like Neanderthal)... Oh, BTW, there is no such thing as "devolution" it is either evolution (adopt/change and survive) or extinction...

Unicellular organism do have more amount of genetic diversity and this hardly affects their existence as every single cell is independent entity....it is basically a natural trial and error process....if the genetic mutation (addition, deletion or substitution) is viable in natural selection, the cell survives and replicate either to form a new species to co exist with the present species or replace it....if not viable, the cell dies. You can find this very commonly in antimicrobial resistance in organisms...but this process is very slow and limited in multicellular animal or plants....and about the programming.....1 codon consists of 3 base of DNA, which transcripts into 3 anticodon of RNA, again which attaches a single amino acid into a growing polypeptide chain during translation(protein synthesis). This process is same and universal for all neucleated cells.....as I said earlier, the difference is made by the protein molecules and their modifications.

 

[Nilgiri]

Unicellular organism do have more amount of genetic diversity and this hardly affects their existence as every single cell is independent entity....it is basically a natural trial and error process....if the genetic mutation (addition, deletion or substitution) is viable in natural selection, the cell survives and replicate either to form a new species to co exist with the present species or replace it....if not viable, the cell dies. You can find this very commonly in antimicrobial resistance in organisms...but this process is very slow and limited in multicellular animal or plants....and about the programming.....1 codon consists of 3 base of DNA, which transcripts into 3 anticodon of RNA, again which attaches a single amino acid into a growing polypeptide chain during translation(protein synthesis). This process is same and universal for all neucleated cells.....as I said earlier, the difference is made by the protein molecules and their modifications.

Do you have a biology type background out of interest?

 

[ALexxy87]

Do you have a biology type background out of interest?

I am a doctor doing my post graduation in internal medicine...

 

[Sneaker]

Unicellular organism do have more amount of genetic diversity and this hardly affects their existence as every single cell is independent entity....it is basically a natural trial and error process....if the genetic mutation (addition, deletion or substitution) is viable in natural selection, the cell survives and replicate either to form a new species to co exist with the present species or replace it....if not viable, the cell dies. You can find this very commonly in antimicrobial resistance in organisms...but this process is very slow and limited in multicellular animal or plants....and about the programming.....1 codon consists of 3 base of DNA, which transcripts into 3 anticodon of RNA, again which attaches a single amino acid into a growing polypeptide chain during translation(protein synthesis). This process is same and universal for all neucleated cells.....as I said earlier, the difference is made by the protein molecules and their modifications.

First, thanks for introducing to me about codon. But I think it is not exactly relevant here. We are not talking about genetic diversity (a.k.a genepool) but DNA length (number of base pairs). OP implied that since human DNA length is shorter than ancestor, we devolved, which is rubbish. DNA not only contains useful information, but lot of it is junk/non-functional (or function not understood). Further, lot of genetic code is for "switching/timing" rather than making any protein (they switch other DNA on/off at specific timing). So, just because an organism has less number of base-pair (or DNA length), it doesn't mean "less evolved or devolved". My point is, there is no such thing as "devolution". If our ancestors had small tails and we don't but our successor species has even longer tails (due to say, in response to a specific natural pressure), it doesn't mean our successor species "devolved", it still means they evolved. The point of evolution is survival and until that (species survival) happens, by whatever response or change in the appearance/genetic code etc etc, it is still considered as evolution.

 

[ALexxy87]

First, thanks for introducing to me about codon. But I think it is not exactly relevant here. We are not talking about genetic diversity (a.k.a genepool) but DNA length (number of base pairs). OP implied that since human DNA length is shorter than ancestor, we devolved, which is rubbish. DNA not only contains useful information, but lot of it is junk/non-functional (or function not understood). Further, lot of genetic code is for "switching/timing" rather than making any protein (they switch other DNA on/off at specific timing). So, just because an organism has less number of base-pair (or DNA length), it doesn't mean "less evolved or devolved". My point is, there is no such thing as "devolution". If our ancestors had small tails and we don't but our successor species has even longer tails (due to say, in response to a specific natural pressure), it doesn't mean our successor species "devolved", it still means they evolved. The point of evolution is survival and until that (species survival) happens, by whatever response or change in the appearance/genetic code etc etc, it is still considered as evolution.

You have got a good point but let me clear you a bit more......
There is no 'punctuation' property of DNA polymerase or transcriptase enzyme, that means it cannot 'skip' any 'unwanted' codon....this is a major cause of missense mutation...i.e. suppose the original sequence of the template strand was TTAGCC...(one amino acid for TTA codon, another for GCC codon, but if it erratically started from second T instead of the first, it will read like TAGCC...i.e. one amino acid will be attached according to TAG, instead of TTA.
If there is any codon which does not code for any amino acid, it is called nonsense codon...(the one you were referring to). It is also called 'stop codon' because when any stop codon appears in the translation process, the whole process gets TERMINATED...irrespective of the outcome of the resultant protein molecule. So it is practically not feasible to have too much nonsense codon in a DNA chain...
The total number of DNA molecules are same in every cell of a multicellular life..so you can easily ask why different kind of protein molecules are synthesized by different type of cells....the answer is....it is not like that the entire process will start from the starting point of the chain and end at its opposite terminal...there are multiple initiation codons present in the chain...the process starts only from those points..though out of all of them, which site will be selected is specific for the protein to be synthesized, the cell and the enzyme related to the process.....and once started, the process will continue till one nonsense codon appears...
Frankly, I don't know much about the genetic process of evolution, but it is quite apparent that there is very little chance of having strong relation between the length of the molecule and the process of evolution(or devolution).....as we can see that how much length will be useful for protein synthesis is fixed for the protein and the cell.

 

[Kamikaze Pilot]

Are we de-evolving?

Sad.