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Future human-chimp hybrids?
[ open letter to SF Chron's science editor ]
To:
David Perlman,
SF Chronicle Science Editor
[ dperlman [at] sfchronicle.com ]
Dear Science Editor,
How closely are modern humans related to modern chimps (and bonobos)?
This question arises afresh as we learn that modern humans
may be descended from ancient
chimp-human hybrids.
(A) Please (if you dare) write a speculative column
raising these and related questions:
Are new chimp-human hybrids genetically possible in the 21st century?
Using modern techniques, in vitro, could a human ovum (female haploid gamete)
accept a chimp spermatozoön (male haploid gamete)?
That is, could the ovum even allow this gamete to penetrate (or to fuse with) its outer surfance?
If so, then could the two sets of chromosomes begin to merge,
as in normal human/human (or chimp/chimp) fertilization ( conjugation? )?
At what point(s) could chromosomal or genetic incompatibilities halt this process of zygosis?
Could a zygote (diploid cell) be created?
Could this zygote then divide, and divide again, and again?
How far might this new life develop, in vitro?
Would development halt naturally, at some point, because of inherent defects?
Or would it continue as long as the in vitro environment would allow --
in other words, until the embryo would need to be nurtured in a womb?
And so forth.
[ If I've worded these biological questions erroneously, please forgive me.
Please reframe them in proper form. ]
(B) My own guesses are:
that, with existing and near-future techniques, a zygote might begin to exist;
but that no reputable U.S. scientist would dare to let the process go very far,
fearing negative emotional reactions from bureaucrats, politicians, religious demagogues, et alii.
But IF there were a "truly free country", where religion wasn't powerful,
and IF a team of brave scientists worked in secret, with private funding, then I think
there's a POSSIBILITY of creating not merely a zygote, but even an embryo.
And, if this potential creature were moved into the receptive womb of a female human volunteer (presumably a scientist herself), there's a possibility of a fetus.
And perhaps of a live-born infant.
I'm guessing that such a baby would itself be sterile (like a mule or a hinny), if it survived into adulthood. [Doesn't a modern chimp have one more somatic chromosome pair than a modern human? ]
Those are just one ignorant layperson's GUESSES about the biology of this matter.
(C) And beyond biology:
We Yanks live today in a former democracy which has become an oligarchy,
and may soon become an "ecclesiocracy" (government by a religious sect or church).
[I refuse to use the term "theocracy", because this implies that human sects actually represent God,
and can actually rule on His or Her behalf. That's hubris and blasphemy, in my view. ]
I can easily imagine that fascists and fundamentalists, who usually oppose abortion,
might be happy to abort this hybrid fetus; or at least to kill the pregnant woman.
I can imagine that mother and child, and the whole research team, would need life-long
protection (and/or secrecy).
I doubt that, in 2006, anyone has been brave enough to attempt this.
Nor do I think the technology has been good enough. Yet.
But any competent fiction writer could think of 2028, or maybe 2106
(assuming that Muslim and pseudo-Christian fundies haven't sooner destroyed civilization).
Novelists and futurists, start your computers!
Awaiting your reply,
Tortuga Bi LIBERTY
of San Francisco
franhattan-owner [at] yahoogroups.com
May 2006
..........
PS#1: Thanks for correcting (online at sfGate) the "anti-fact" about X chromosomes;
which appeared in hardcopy (Chron, 18 May 2006).
I've made equally embarrassing bloopers, writing for the queer [ lgbtqi ] page of IndyBay.org .
...
PS #2: News reports mentioned chimpanzees, but not bonobos.
Presumably this is because the chimp/bonobo split
is much more recent than the chimp/human split?
...........
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-05-17T201256Z_01_L16632619_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-HUMANS.xml
.........
David Perlman,
SF Chronicle Science Editor
[ dperlman [at] sfchronicle.com ]
Dear Science Editor,
How closely are modern humans related to modern chimps (and bonobos)?
This question arises afresh as we learn that modern humans
may be descended from ancient
chimp-human hybrids.
(A) Please (if you dare) write a speculative column
raising these and related questions:
Are new chimp-human hybrids genetically possible in the 21st century?
Using modern techniques, in vitro, could a human ovum (female haploid gamete)
accept a chimp spermatozoön (male haploid gamete)?
That is, could the ovum even allow this gamete to penetrate (or to fuse with) its outer surfance?
If so, then could the two sets of chromosomes begin to merge,
as in normal human/human (or chimp/chimp) fertilization ( conjugation? )?
At what point(s) could chromosomal or genetic incompatibilities halt this process of zygosis?
Could a zygote (diploid cell) be created?
Could this zygote then divide, and divide again, and again?
How far might this new life develop, in vitro?
Would development halt naturally, at some point, because of inherent defects?
Or would it continue as long as the in vitro environment would allow --
in other words, until the embryo would need to be nurtured in a womb?
And so forth.
[ If I've worded these biological questions erroneously, please forgive me.
Please reframe them in proper form. ]
(B) My own guesses are:
that, with existing and near-future techniques, a zygote might begin to exist;
but that no reputable U.S. scientist would dare to let the process go very far,
fearing negative emotional reactions from bureaucrats, politicians, religious demagogues, et alii.
But IF there were a "truly free country", where religion wasn't powerful,
and IF a team of brave scientists worked in secret, with private funding, then I think
there's a POSSIBILITY of creating not merely a zygote, but even an embryo.
And, if this potential creature were moved into the receptive womb of a female human volunteer (presumably a scientist herself), there's a possibility of a fetus.
And perhaps of a live-born infant.
I'm guessing that such a baby would itself be sterile (like a mule or a hinny), if it survived into adulthood. [Doesn't a modern chimp have one more somatic chromosome pair than a modern human? ]
Those are just one ignorant layperson's GUESSES about the biology of this matter.
(C) And beyond biology:
We Yanks live today in a former democracy which has become an oligarchy,
and may soon become an "ecclesiocracy" (government by a religious sect or church).
[I refuse to use the term "theocracy", because this implies that human sects actually represent God,
and can actually rule on His or Her behalf. That's hubris and blasphemy, in my view. ]
I can easily imagine that fascists and fundamentalists, who usually oppose abortion,
might be happy to abort this hybrid fetus; or at least to kill the pregnant woman.
I can imagine that mother and child, and the whole research team, would need life-long
protection (and/or secrecy).
I doubt that, in 2006, anyone has been brave enough to attempt this.
Nor do I think the technology has been good enough. Yet.
But any competent fiction writer could think of 2028, or maybe 2106
(assuming that Muslim and pseudo-Christian fundies haven't sooner destroyed civilization).
Novelists and futurists, start your computers!
Awaiting your reply,
Tortuga Bi LIBERTY
of San Francisco
franhattan-owner [at] yahoogroups.com
May 2006
..........
PS#1: Thanks for correcting (online at sfGate) the "anti-fact" about X chromosomes;
which appeared in hardcopy (Chron, 18 May 2006).
I've made equally embarrassing bloopers, writing for the queer [ lgbtqi ] page of IndyBay.org .
...
PS #2: News reports mentioned chimpanzees, but not bonobos.
Presumably this is because the chimp/bonobo split
is much more recent than the chimp/human split?
...........
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-05-17T201256Z_01_L16632619_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-HUMANS.xml
.........
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OK -- maybe not the best place to get technical about species but what prevents crossing is the NEED for such mechanisms (to maintain the species separate). That means that for two closely related species which are in proximity the mecanisms will be present and strong (hybrids unlikely to survive) but if closely related species are not in proximity, if they CAN'T mate because now oceans separate their populations the mechanism may not be well developed or ineffective because it didn't have to evolve. Get it? If living in proximity you wouldm't HAVE tw seperate species unless the mechanism HAD evolved.
MODERN humans have evolved in proximity to both "chimpanzee" species (actually, classify oursleves in a different genus from them, distinguishing "Homo" from "Pan" is not justified except by our unreasonable pride and unwillingness to recognize that we ARE animals.
Scientific stories like this confuse in the popular press. The average person fails to understand that SEVERAL MILLION YEARS is a long time for our evolution. We do not classify fossil "hominids" (our ancestors) as being of OUR species if they are even one million years old and classify some that were still extant as recently as a couple ten of thousands of years ago as "not our species". Understand? We don't know that H. Neanderthalis could produce fertile offspring with H. Sapens.
Please, don't assume that everyone who reads this site is retarded and has zero idea of what science, biology, law or whatever are about. News is often filtered with opinion, humor, speculation, or whathaveyou and not every aspect of every story ever needs a paint-by-numbers 1-2-3 explanation for 4-year olds. We are big kids here. We need you to trust that we can read between the lines and are not as literal-minded as you appear to be.
but his info is useful, and not over-long.
Since he mentioned Neandertals, I'll add that the recent chimp/human news stories mentioned another scientist
who is looking for ways to measure genetic distance between Neandertals and modern humans.
In nature, two nearby populations may avoid inter-breeding; but this avoidance may or may not continue in captivity or domestication.
At any rate, I asked the science editor about in vitro fertilization, with chimp semen and a human ovum, in a petri dish; not about a male chimp actually mating with a female human.
And I guessed that, if a hybrid child were born, it would
probably be unable to reproduce.
As for geographically separated species: In captivity,
tigers and lions sometimes interbreed -- much to the embarrassment of zoo directors, who want to preserve the genetic "purity" of each so-called "species".
(This reminds me of lawyer Clarence Darrow's comment on humans: "I have never met anyone who was racially pure." )
IMHO, taxonomy of living animals is often arbitrary,
in practice;
while paleo-taxonomy (without DNA) is inherently
a guessing game.
First, the post above was about modern technologies, not chimps and humans getting it on to produce offspring. We all know modern humans and chimps can't breed, although some have probably tried throughout history.
As for the study itself, the graph I saw of a timeline on the interbreeding/hybridization suggested this happened over millions of years after initial species separation. So while millions of years might seem like a long time to us, it is not so long in the evolution of species. Millions of years of separation in and of itself does not necessarily separate species as much as Mike seems to think, as theories previous to this study established, largely based on archeological finds. While this particular study is incomplete, it opens new doors to the understanding of human evolution and, if it holds, blows away previous assumptions about timelines and species separation. In fact, it shows that we are far less separated from chimps than previously thought. The current study allows that not all of the evolving chimp and human hybrids could themselves breed. Some were undoubtedly sterile and some did not survive as unique species for other reasons. Our lineage did survive, though, and eventually split completely from chimps in breeding capabilities. It was just a lot more recent than the original chimp-human lineage split, by millions of years.
Sure, we don't know that H. Neanderthalis could produce fertile offspring with H. Sapens, but that does not mean it never successfully happened. We learn new things all the time. Previously, it would have been unthinkable to know that chimp and humans bred after their initial species separation. Now, thanks to new DNA analyses, we know differently.
Don't assume that everyone isn't. Some of the people who post here, and presumably some of the readers, display an absolutely appalling ignorance of science, biology, law, etc. This is an undeniable fact. Anyone attempting to communicate with them must explain the basics, often repeatedly. In most cases, people's ignorance is not their own fault. This society's education system is deeply flawed.
In some cases, though, the ignorance is willful. Some people refuse to believe the truth about anything that contradicts their ideology and/or religious sensibilities. There is no way to communicate the truth to these people. They wont let you. Don't waste your time.
But those whose ignorance is not their own fault have a right to have the truth explained to them in terms they can understand. If someone who is doing so sounds like they are talking down to you, don't take offense. They aren't talking to you at all. They are talking to people who have yet to attain your own exalted level of sublime wisdom and insight. Please don't try to convince them to stop. That would just perpetuate ignorance.