<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 16px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div align="CENTER"><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><font size="5"><span style="font-size: 16pt; "><hr align="CENTER" size="3" width="95%">The Center for Human Development Presents<br></span><span style="font-size: 18pt; "><br></span></font></font><font size="6"><font face="Georgia, Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 24pt; "><b>Ajit Varki<br></b></span></font></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><b><i>UCSD</i></b></span></font></div><div align="CENTER"><font face="Georgia, Times New Roman"><b><font size="4"><span style="font-size: 14pt; "><i>Departments of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine<br></i></span></font></b></font><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><br><b>Friday, November 14th <br></b></span><b><font size="1"><span style="font-size: 9pt; ">12-1pm (discussion 1-1:40pm)<br>room 003 in the Cognitive Science Building</span></font></b></font></div><div align="CENTER"><br></div><div align="CENTER"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px; "><br></span></font></div><div align="CENTER"><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><b><font size="1"><span style="font-size: 9pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px; font-weight: normal; ">“Exploring Human Uniqueness: A Transdisciplinary Approach"</span><br></span></font></b></font></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-center; "><br></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-center; "><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; "><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial">“<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Anthropogeny” (explaining the origin of humans), is
a scientific pursuit undertaken from many directions and perspectives, with
specialists in each discipline tending to see the answers through the lens of
their own expertise. One obvious approach is to compare the genomics and
genetics of humans with our closest evolutionary cousins the so-called “great
apes” (who are now correctly reclassified along with humans as hominids).</span><span style="font-size: 12px; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">The recent sequencing of multiple
primate genomes has opened the door to a systemic approach to this issue. While
sequence differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes are confirmed to
be the predicted </span></span><span style="font-family: Monaco; ">∼</span><span style="font-family: Arial; ">1% in areas that can be precisely aligned, another
1.5% unique to each species was also discovered, making the actual difference
between the two genomes </span><span style="font-family: Monaco; ">∼</span><span style="font-family: Arial; ">4%. In our own work we have utilized these genomic
resources as well as a candidate gene approach, to uncover multiple genetic
differences in sialic acid biology between humans and other hominids, which
have multiple implications for human evolution, biology and disease.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; "><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; "></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; "><span style="font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; "><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; ">Chances of success in anthropogeny are greatly
increased by a transdisciplinary approach that eschews artificial barriers
created by scientific disciplines. Given also the theme of this lecture series,
I will spend the rest of my time talking about this broader approach to
anthropogeny, which requires consideration of both genomes and phenomes, and
their interactions with environment and culture. </span><span style="font-family: DiverdaSansCom-Light; color: rgb(31, 30, 33); font-size: 12px; "><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; ">Rejecting
the artificial and unproductive ‘nature versus nurture” dichotomy that has long
slowed progress, I will consider genome interactions with environment, behavior
and culture, finally speculating that aspects of human uniqueness arose because
of a primate evolutionary trend towards increasing and irreversible dependence
on learned behaviors and culture — perhaps relaxing allowable thresholds for
large-scale genomic diversity. Thus, cultural buffering of genomic changes may
have allowed hominid genomes to partially escape Darwinian selection and to
avoid the need for the final phase of the Baldwin effect, in which learned
behaviors of value to a species eventually become hard-wired in their genomes.<span> </span>This is turn could help explicate
Wallace’s Conundrum, which questions how conventional natural selection alone
could account for the evolution of human mind. </span></span></span></span></div></div><div align="CENTER"><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><b><font size="1"><span style="font-size: 9pt; "><br></span></font><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><u>Everyone is welcome. <br></u></span></b><font size="1"><span style="font-size: 9pt; "><br><b>Speaker list</b> and <b>papers</b> are available at <a href="http://www.chd.ucsd.edu/seminar/f08sched.shtml">http://www.chd.ucsd.edu/seminar/f08sched.shtml</a><br><br>For any<b> questions </b>about the seminar<b> contact Katie </b>at kgwagner<a href="x-msg://479/jlparris@psy.ucsd.edu">@psy.ucsd.edu</a></span></font></font></div><div><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><font size="1"><span style="font-size: 9pt; "><br> <br><hr align="CENTER" size="3" width="95%"><br></span></font></font><font face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "></span></font></div><div align="CENTER"><font size="1"><font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><span style="font-size: 9pt; "><br>If you are interested in receiving the weekly announcements for the <br>Center for Human Development talks you should add your email address <br>(or if you are not interested you can remove it) to the CHD Seminars list. <br><br>To add or remove, visit<br><font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://mailman.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/chdseminar-l">http://mailman.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/chdseminar-l</a></u></font></span></font></font></div></div></span></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>