For the last semester, we have learned about the evolution. Evolution is constant but very slow in terms of the time even until today and will continue to happen in terms of the biological, behavioral, environmental, or cultural traits. People have become aware of the DNA techknowledge and food consumption than ever in the history, thanks to advanced informational technology.
For example, in the article Taming the New Frontiers in Gene Editing by Sarah Scoles, she talks about the CRISPR- Cas9 that is the world’s most powerful gene-editing tool. The tool enables to swap out and switch the sections of the genome efficiently. Scientists try to switch or swap certain genes and see what kind of changes happen on each change. According to the author, “CRISPR-Cas9 does represent a revolution in gene editing. Scientists genetically engineered organisms before CRISPR, but the techniques were time-and-tedium-intensive and much less precise. Among other problems, edited genes ended up where no one intended them to be and edits were unevenly distributed among cells. CRISPR-Cas9 is a cheap, fast and reliable technology for gene editing. However, the technology still has object to overcome in terms of the ethical evaluation. Some people would insist that the gene modifying technology is a danger that might affect future generations. However, I agree to the author’s opinion that it maybe is only ‘speeding up the process’ like an catalyst, and it is actually an a lot of power and responsibility that has infinite potential when it becomes stable and settled with human samples and regulations. When these are settled, modern human will begin to control the speed of the evolution with the technology that a great power comes with great responsibility.
Another aspect of evolution is related to our culture, especially food consumption culture. It is evident that modern people are enjoying the informational nourishment with information technology and its tools like phones, tablets, and computers, and we can learn or obtain informations on the food we consume each day if you wish. However, at the same time, modern people are living the life of busiest lives in the history, and a lot of them tend to reduce time on eating food and often select to easy and fast junk food. These junk food not only causes obesity to the fast food consumer but it also affects their children’s health as well. United States has been suffered from the Atherosclerosis and chronic diseases that comes from overweight and obesity. Obesity is an important disease especially in United States because it might change the your DNA and remain a bad inheritance to one’s offsprings. As much as we could know about the ingredients and its effect on the human body it’s our responsibility to be known and select proper and healthy ingredients.
Evolution get affected by many reasons including biological, behavioral, environmental, or cultural traits. From what I have learned this class, I believe that these factors would not affect on people not by itself but these traits would interact each other on our bodies and will be shown on the human evolution in a long term. This is a blessing to know about this great power to acknowledge about the gene modifying and food selection as we can maybe accelerate or control the direction of speed of our own evolution.
Hi, Kim! I love that you mentioned the Sarah Scoles article because I too found it very interesting. I think genetic modifying is daintily a key part of evolution. I find it interesting actually because it affects evolution in multiple ways. Not only does it directly affect the actual genetics of human beings, but the evolution of the knowledge and how long it took to learn how to manipulate genes is another form of evolution. It is the evolution of the human mind that allows us to get to this part in our technology. I think a lot of technology is like that, not only does it evolve the behaviors and cultures that modern humans practice, but our brains have evolved to create these things. Nice job.
Hi Kim!
I think your discussion on the evolution of our diets is something that is extremely important to consider. I never thought to focus on junk food as an evolutionary change, but it is true. Processed foods are a new idea within the past 100 years, and it has changed the way humans consume food and why. Back in our evolutionary chain, humans ate food for survival. Now, we eat food for survival AND pleasure. Much of the time eating for absolutely no nutritious reasoning. This can directly be correlated to the vast weight gain these past 100 years as well, and will always be a heavy concern and perhaps set back in our evolution.
I think the ability to change genes with CRISPR-Cas9 is super interesting and something I’d like to learn more about. It not only relates to humans and our evolution but also plants. Genetically modified organisms are pretty controversial for various reasons so I definitely understand why there are so many opinions about it when it comes to the use of gene editing for humans or even animals. I wonder what negative outcomes there could be from continuously using genetic editing on people or if it would just solve a temporary problem that would still prevail into the next generation. I think it is interesting that the author believes it to be acting like a catalyst and speeding up the process, however, there are plenty of problems that could arise.
Hi Kim! I agree that obesity is 100 percent a problem that we are dealing with in the world today. This mainly comes from the cost of which it is to be healthy and complete healthy eating. Evolution has been for the good, but also has some negative effects that can potentially have effect on how we actually evolve as a human race.
I agree with the comments made about technology! It is in fact an evolution process itself that feeds us information and knowledge to evolve our brains faster than ever before! I thought it interesting learning about the genetically engineering CRISPR, I knew we were genetically modifying plants and other organisms but I didn’t know they had started to modify human genes. This could mean so much for our future! Being able to control distribution of genes and turn them on or off depending on health benefits! This could mean a revolution in the threats human face that have no cure or no answer.