Sorry Walter... (and Fred... and John Paul..)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A few key changes in a single gene help explain why people can talk while mice and apes cannot, researchers said on Wednesday.The gene, called FOXP2, seems to be involved in the face and jaw movements necessary for speech, the researchers in Germany and Britain said.What is surprising is that the gene is so similar in animals ranging from mice to orangutans to chimpanzees, with a relatively small change having emerged--just as modern humans did--between 120,000 and 200,000 years ago, the researchers report in this week's online issue of the journal Nature...What was it Wally and Co. say - 500,000+ changes required?

Remember that this gene helps people "not" to speak when it is not in its correct form (in a very interesting way I suppose). However, that does not necessarily mean that it will make a chimpanze speak if it was inserted into their genome.But we shall see, I guess. An urbane and articulate genetically engineered chimp hosting the Tonight Show could be in our future. Perhaps we could even hire a few hundred of them to do some typing work for a Shakespearean play (or perhaps not.. it is a speech gene after all).

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Originally posted by Rationalist:
Remember that this gene helps people "not" to speak when it is not in its correct form (in a very interesting way I suppose). However, that does not necessarily mean that it will make a chimpanze speak if it was inserted into their genome.

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But we shall see, I guess. An urbane and articulate genetically engineered chimp hosting the Tonight Show could be in our future. Perhaps we could even hire a few hundred of them to do some typing work for a Shakespearean play (or perhaps not.. it is a speech gene after all).

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It is apparently not just a speech gene. I read the following in the New York Times:"The affected members of the London family in which the defective version of FOXP2 was discovered do possess a form of language. Their principal defect seems to lie in a lack of fine control over the muscles of the throat and mouth, needed for rapid speech. But in tests they find written answers as hard as verbal ones, suggesting that the defective gene causes conceptual problems as well as ones of muscular control."I don't think anyone is suggesting that if you place this gene into a chimp it will talk. That would be a shocker for everyone. On the other hand, if there was a group of chimps who all had the gene, they may be able to communicate more effectively. I suppose the tests will be eventually performed, and then we will know for certain.FK

The article tells us Walter's assumptions pertaining to language & speech are pretty solid. (That is our alleged ancestor from 10 million years ago didn't have those adaptations)One article on this tells us this isn't the only gene required:http://dailynews.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=585&ncid=...

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"It is not the gene that made language possible," geneticist Wolfgang Enard of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, stressed in a telephone interview.

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He said it is probably one of many genes involved in speech and language, which are complex abilities.

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The research is ongoing but it would be interesting to see if they try to genetically alter this gene (what, 2 amino acids?) in mice or simians to see what difference it makes in those organisms. Will the mice be able to grin or snarl? Or do they just know that when FOXP2 is messed with in humans the effects are very apparent (speech impetiments)?At least scientists are continuing to realize that one gene is responsible for more than one protein and/ or function. Did this capability arise naturally? Did the alleged first populations have this ability as well as happening to have the ability to self-replicate?------------------
John Paul

Yawn....Yeah, Wally Kuckoo's baseless assertions are on 'solid' ground....yup... at least "500,000" changes required... yup... whatever...

So we just engineer those handful of changes into a chimp, easliy doable via mol biol today - and - walla - talking chimps! I know you don't believe that SLPx.

Shrug, sigh. Nice misrepresentation SLP. That is your typical move.For the record I was talking about Walter's assumptions pertaining to speech & language- ie that our alleged primitive ancestor from 10 million years ago didn't have those adaptations.BTW you shouldn't do science by reading reports. The actual article on FOXP2 discusses speech impairments in humans....

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What was it Wally and Co. say - 500,000+ changes required?

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Wasn't the supposed mutation just two amino acids?[This message has been edited by blitz77, 08-19-2002]

The difference in the human FOXP2 gene and the mouse (& simian?) FOXP2 gene is 2 amino acids. However, as the news report even stated there is more to speech and language than this one gene. The article in Nature discusses how a little change in the FOXP2 gene effects our ability for speech.

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It is not the gene that made language possible," geneticist Wolfgang Enard of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, stressed in a telephone interview.

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point to consider:
If the differences were caused by a mutation did both amino acids change at one time? Would a change in just one confer any advantage that would allow it to be selected for?

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
So we just engineer those handful of changes into a chimp, easliy doable via mol biol today - and - walla - talking chimps! I know you don't believe that SLPx.

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No, I don't. The article doesn't imply that, either.

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Originally posted by John Paul:
Shrug, sigh. Nice misrepresentation SLP. That is your typical move.

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Shrug.. sigh.. Gee - JAFC used to write similar hand waves at NAIG...
No misrepresentation at all, as usual. Just following cretin logic to its "logical" end.. I know that is frowned upon. Silly me.

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For the record I was talking about Walter's assumptions pertaining to speech & language- ie that our alleged primitive ancestor from 10 million years ago didn't have those adaptations.

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And? Did not Wally Kuckoo imply that such things required some huge number of adaptive changes to get the human condition? For the record, none of your links mentioned anything about it, and this article in fact indicates that some huge number in fact was probably not 'required.'

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BTW you shouldn't do science by reading reports. The actual article on FOXP2 discusses speech impairments in humans....

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LOl!Talk about projection!YOU should not 'do science' by:Linking to AiG articles
Linking to course syllabi
Linking to opinion pieces on other creationiswt sites
Conflating disparate notions
Talking about things you have no business talking about (e.g., phylogenetics)I am still waiting for your objective tests of your beliefs.And your evidence that Haldane's model applies to pre-human populations and how you know this and your objective tests of this.And so on...But that is a waste of time, isn't it? You just ignore the posts that blow your feeble grasp of science out of the water.

What makes you think that animals other than humans don't
have a capacity for language just because they can't use
human languages ?

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Originally posted by Peter:
What makes you think that animals other than humans don't
have a capacity for language just because they can't use
human languages ?

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Good point.Carl Sagan asked in one of his books something like "Who among us speaks Dolphinese?"Human chauvenism shows up all over the palce.Chimps and other apes and, if I amnot mistaken, some monkeys show evidence of a developed Broca's area (motor speecch area), and fossil endocasts of Australopithecines indicate that they also had at least the beginnings of this area.I suspect that the gene in question may very well have some impact on this cortical area.

The fact that you misrepresented and almost always do, is obvious. Once again the links I provided were NOT about mutations. They are about the fact that the alleged ancestor from 10 million years ago did NOT have those adaptations.The article did not indicate that some huge number was probably not required. It stated that there are more than that one gene that are responsible.The only waste of anything on this DB is you.toodles scotty

Peter:
What makes you think that animals other than humans don't
have a capacity for language just because they can't use
human languages ?John Paul:
Peter you have to take things in context:

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Chimpanzees lack key parts of a language gene that is critical for human speech, say researchers. The finding may begin to explain why only humans use spoken language.

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and

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Language is unique to humans: chimpanzees can be trained to communicate using a complex set of symbols, but they can pronounce only a handful of words because they cannot make the required facial movements.

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from:Nature - Not FoundHowever I have no doubt that other organisms communicate. But did that ability evolve or was it designed/ Created?------------------
John Paul