• Question: What is the evolutionary advantage of every human being made slightly different

    Asked by 15mbaguley to David, Gemma, Juhi, Matt, Stéphane, Yinka on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: David Howard

      David Howard answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      If the planet changes or a new virus develops then these slight genetic differences will hopefully mean that at least some people can survive and humans can continue to exist.

    • Photo: Gemma Chandratillake

      Gemma Chandratillake answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Yep – as @David says, this is an important aspect of sexual reproduction i.e. reproduction via eggs and sperm (or pollen and eggs in plants) meeting to make a new individual. There are some species that don’t reproduce sexually. In that case, all individuals of the species will be genetically identical.
      I heard on the radio the other day that the species of fungus that causes Athletes Foot, is no longer reproducing sexually as all the samples isolated are genetically identical. This should mean that it would be easier for us humans to eliminate this fungus from the planet, if we decided we wanted to, as it would be more difficult for the fungus to evolve resistance to a drug we developed to kill it since it has no genetic variation to work with.

    • Photo: Stéphane Berneau

      Stéphane Berneau answered on 11 Mar 2018:

      It is all based on natural selection.
      Random changes will lead to modification and “Nature” decides which traits will be kept.
      For Humans, it is more difficult to apply Natural Selection as we have advanced technologies.

      If you want to know more about Natural Selection, I have selected a short video:

    • Photo: Matt Bawn

      Matt Bawn answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      So imagine you have a house that you have to maintain and a complete tool kit to help you. You live in a town that is very windy every winter. Every year there are wind storms that pull tiles off the roof and every year you have to climb up a ladder and take your hammer (or whatever) to nail new tiles back into place. But apart from this the weather and the house are perfect and this is all you need to do, gradually your other tools go rusty or get lost but because you don’t need them it doesn’t matter. Then one winter instead of being windy it gets very cold and the water freezes in the pipes, you go to get a heatgun and a spanner but the spanner is missing and the heatgun no longer works.

      The advantage of every humans DNA being slightly different is analagous to being able to borrow these tools from a neighbour.

      Maybe this story works, maybe not. Let me know.

Comments