What were the evolutionary changes that gave humans our unique characteristics? Are humans still evolving, and if so what are the driving forces? Geneticists and evolutionary biologists are now getting the tools to address these fascinating questions, but crucial challenges lie ahead.
Comparative genomics now allows us to pinpoint sequences that have evolved specifically in the human lineage. But how did these sequences contribute to changes that differentiate humans from other primates? An enlightening approach would be to express these sequences in transgenic non-human primates and look at the phenotypic outcome. But such a strategy would be fraught with ethical difficulties — the topic of a Science and Society article on p658. Because of great apes' evolutionary closeness to humans, studies in these animals are the most likely to give informative results in this scenario. But, the authors argue, the very features that would make transgenic apes so useful in this context would also expose them to unacceptable harm.
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