January 30, 2006
JUST SO GROSS
Scientists Find Gene That Controls Type of Earwax in People (Nicholas Wade, NY Times, 1/30/06)
Earwax may not play a prominent part in human history but at least a small role for it has now been found by a team of Japanese researchers.It's not quite constructing a world-wide computer network in order to pump porn into our houses, but it ain't no cure for cancer. Stepping back a little bit, two separate but parallel "ear wax" mutations would seem to provide ammunition for every side of the Darwin wars. Posted by David Cohen at January 30, 2006 8:08 PMEarwax comes in two types, wet and dry. The wet form predominates in Africa and Europe, where 97 percent or more of people have it, and the dry form among East Asians. The populations of South and Central Asia are roughly half and half. By comparing the DNA of Japanese with each type, the researchers were able to identify the gene that controls which type a person has, they report in today's issue of Nature Genetics. . . .
But earwax seems to have the very humble role of being no more than biological flypaper, preventing dust and insects from entering the ear. Since it seems unlikely that having wet or dry earwax could have made much difference to an individual's fitness, the earwax gene may have some other, more important function. Dr. Yoshiura and his colleagues suggest that the gene would have been favored because of its role in sweating.
They write that earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, since populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, while the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have more body odor.
I don't know about your ears, but keeping insects out of my ears is important enough to get a gene of its own.
But I understand that Emory University psychologist Drew Westen and University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek have disovered Democrats genetically secrete a higher quality ear wax than Republicans...
Posted by: John at January 30, 2006 10:50 PMthe wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have more body odor
They must have a camera hidden in my bathroom. With an olfactory sensor of some type...
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 30, 2006 11:37 PMAny word on back hair?
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at January 31, 2006 12:58 AMStepping back a little bit, two separate but parallel "ear wax" mutations would seem to provide ammunition for every side of the Darwin wars.
Really? This seems to me to land heavily on the Darwin side. IDers will have a tough time explaining why God would bother to create different earwax/sweat genes in humans, but to the rest of us this sort of variation is just another example of the odd pathways of evolution.
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 31, 2006 1:49 AMPapaya
IDers will have a tough time explaining why God would bother to create different earwax/sweat genes in humans...
Oh, I don't know. Surely the IDers can fall back on the notion of a chosen people.
Posted by: Peter B at January 31, 2006 7:40 AMPapaya: Two separate but parallel mutations on something that can have, at best, only the smallest of effects on fitness? The chances are so vanishingly small that it's almost a miracle by definition.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 31, 2006 11:12 AMDavid, mutations don't necessarily have an effect on fitness at all. There's nothing particularly miraculous about one that has "only the smallest effect."
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 31, 2006 11:38 AMPapaya: That is a brilliant, brilliant point.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 31, 2006 1:12 PMI can't wait for my next dinner party.
Posted by: Genecis at January 31, 2006 3:53 PMPapaya: so nature is allowed to have a sense of humor, but Jehovah isn't?
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 31, 2006 7:16 PMJoe: the humor is in us when we perceive nature's "jokes," but nature has no sense of humor.
Jehovah might, but that would rather change the core ID argument, wouldn't it? From "the myriad complexities of life require God's design" to "the myriad pointless, inefficient quirks and oddities of life that look like the work of evolution are actually proof that God has a tremendous sense of humor and is trying to make scientists think evolution occurred, when it didn't really." Sounds more like Loki.
Posted by: PapayaSF at February 1, 2006 1:40 AM