Human evolution; new genes identified for body fur (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 10, 2023, 16:38 (472 days ago) @ David Turell

We do carry the genes for full body hair:

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-still-have-the-genes-for-a-full-coat-of-fur-scienti...

"Fur is a defining feature of being a mammal. But bald is beautiful for several mammalian weirdos, including dolphins, mole rats, elephants, and of course, humans. Not to mention a handy adaptation.

"Yet all our ancestors had plenty of fur. According to a new study on relatively hairless mammals, we still have the means to be hirsute. Those genes, it seems, have simply been switched off.

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"The selection pressures for this lack of hair are just as varied as the species that have lost their fuzz. For elephants, it's a way to lose heat faster; for marine mammals, being sleeker means less resistance moving in the water; and for us, well, there are possibly multiple contributing pressures, including thermoregulation and reduction of parasites.

"Despite these differences, Kowalczyk and colleagues found the genetic changes in furless species mostly arose from mutations in the same sets of genes.

"Many of these mutation-gathering genes were related to the structure of the hair itself, like genes that encode for keratin proteins, the sequences that regulate the development of hair.

***

"While we still retain many of our ancestral fur-coding genes, their regulation dials have been set to 'off' through the accumulation of these mutations.

"The team also identified hundreds of new hair-related regulatory genes and some potential new hair-coding genes. These may prove important for people trying to recover lost hair due to disorders or chemotherapy."

Comment: hair is a different issue when considering adaptations with loss of genes that is the reason for the change, as Behe has documented. Here the genes are present but silenced. I do not understand why different mechanisms are used. Mammals without hair must have that adaptation to fit the environment in which they live. I'm stuck with simply understanding it is God's choice, but do not see His reasoning.