I Feel Really Pedantic ....
Why does the phrase "gained genes" bother me so much?
Human genomes have evolved in response to our cultural behaviours: a classic example is the way that some human populations gained genes for lactose tolerance following the onset of dairy farming.
(Barras↱)
Okay, what am I missing?
• If
... biologists use the term “culture” to describe the learning of such striking behaviours ...
→ and
... even though killer whales shared a common ancestor as recently as 200,000 years ago, individual cultural groups have become genetically distinct ...
→ and
... The genomes indicate that all five groups began when a small founding population – numbering perhaps a few tens or hundreds of individuals – invaded each new niche and then expanded ...
→ and
... Whenever a species passes through this sort of population bottleneck, it can rapidly gain a unique genetic identity ...
• then
↳ What does the phrase "gained genes" actually mean?
It seems as if I need to widen the scope. Working with the phrase "some human populations gained genes for lactose tolerance" actually makes sense, but isn't that largely a matter of a certain degree of disruption to a population that is injured or falls behind because of the difference, as well as the prosperity of the advantaged population over the course of generations? The "population", interpreted particularly to mean all of the people within the group through a given demarcated period, does gain raw numbers of individuals expressing lactose tolerant, but that seems a really thin definition of a human population gaining genes.
I mean, I am aware it's possible for certain organisms to actively annex actual foreign genetic material, but I'm also pretty sure that's not what the phrase is intended to mean on this occasion.
Did either humanity or orcas actually acquire new genetic material in some manner specifically dependent on cultural expression that I am, in ignorance and general density, simply failing to glean from the article?
Oh, hey, the journal article is currently
open access↱.
And ...no. I really don't like the phrase "gained genes".
So ... okay, what am I missing? Obviously, I'm using too tight a definition of what it means to gain a gene. Then again, even under
that definition, I can still speculate a connection between culture and gaining genes. And it's
really speculative. But still, for some reason those words grabbed my attention.
Why is whatever functional definition by which I perceive the words constricted? What obvious point am I completely overlooking that I should suddenly get so pedantic about two words I probably shouldn't have noticed except for a psychoanalysis I don't feel like trying to read right now?
____________________
Notes:
Barras, Colin. "Orcas are first non-humans whose evolution is driven by culture". New Scientist. 31 May 2016. NewScientist.com. 1 June 2016. http://bit.ly/1TQIGfv
Foote, Andre D., et al. "Genome-culture coevolution promotes rapid divergence of killer whale ecotypes". Nature Communications. 31 May 2016. Nature.com. 1 June 2016. http://go.nature.com/1UgfE3f