As a Human Biology major at Michigan State, much of what I have learned throughout my coursework has included the concept of evolution. The biology courses I have taken focus mostly on the history of evolution and how the theory came about. This includes the ideas of Charles Darwin and also ideas from Gregor Mendel. Evolutionary biology courses seek to cover the fundamental concepts regarding evolution and how it can be seen and calculated in different species, populations, etc. One thing that many Human Biology courses teach is the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium which is an equation that can be used to determine whether a population is in equilibrium or if it evolving. Essentially from a Human Biology perspective, evolution can be described as the changing of a populations genotype and phenotype to fit a particular standard which makes them most fit for the environment that they live in.
As far as the information covered in this course, there is a lot of similarity to what was covered in human biology courses. The information regarding genetics, specifically replication, transcription, and translation is a topic that is commonly taught in many biology courses. We focus on learning the mechanisms behind the processes and learning the intricate details that go into each step of the process. We also focus a lot on sources of mutations like was brought up in the course work. Other courses in human biology focus on topics such as epigenetics which deals with altering the gene expressions of certain individuals to one particular generation while not affecting their offspring. This is a field I find particularly interesting because it shows how the advancements in innovation have found their way into genetics, which was once a field that seemed unchangeable. Recent genetic research has also focused on gene therapy and knocking out genes so that an individual only expresses desirable traits. This seems like it would be a dangerous path to go down because it could eliminate genetic variability and in the event that natural selection shifts toward a different desirable trait, it could set the human population up for failure and extinction by selection.
Some information discussed in this course has not really been covered in the human biology courses. For example, human biology courses do not focus much on the relatedness of humans and chimpanzees. This is a topic that provides support for evolution, but differs from what is taught in the biology courses. Like I mentioned previously, the biology courses are much more focused on the theory than the applications and relevance in terms of humans. After going through the course work for this week, I learned a lot of information regarding the evolution with humans. I find this information very interesting because I feel that it is an application of other concepts I have studied. Ideas that I once thought were only relevant for problems in biology classes are now able to be applied to something like the evolution of humans and their relatedness to chimpanzees. I hope to learn more about the evolution from primates to humans in this course.
It seems like the concept of evolution is something you have been studying for a while and you have a deep understanding of. I think it’s interesting that you bring up the idea of gene therapy and how humans are going down a dangerous path. People often don’t look at evolution from the stand point of how important it is in having desirable traits and creating variability. Humans up until this point haven’t had the ability to scientifically control traits and decide what is desirable instead of having nature decide which is what has happened in the past. It will be interesting to see how scientific advancements influence evolution in the future and if it will actually lead to our extinction.
As a Human Biology major learning much, I bet you are pretty familiar with the concept of evolution. It was interesting point that you related the study of evolution to your own field biology with many similarities in concepts such as genetics, replication, transcription, and translation. Moreover, the fact that the recent genetic research focus on gene therapy and knocking out genes to design a desirable traits because the DNA modification has been one of my interest ever since it has become issue in both science field and the society. I assume that biology courses would take more intricate details to study the mechanism behind the evolution process to scientifically analyze. I believe that people are still evolving trying to fit themselves in to the world better naturally .