The evolution of our genes and our ancestors

1. The evolution of our genes and our ancestors Project 2014

2. What is a gene? • Carry information that determines your traits • Made of DNA and produces proteins • Inherited by parents • Most of our genes are the same except less than 1% of them • We have between 20 000 and 50 000

3. Where do our genes come from? You get your genes from your parents who got them from theirs and so on. This leads you back to your earliest ancestors

4. Who are our first ancestors? • “Y-Chromosomal Adam” and “Mitochondrial Eve” are the scientifically proven theories that every man alive is descended from a single man and every woman and man is descended from a single woman . • This doesn’t mean that they were the only man and woman alive at that time, but the only ones that have a lineage still existing today. • The first “true” humans appeared 200 000 years ago in Africa, Ethiopia. • For a while we were an endangered specie with no more than 2000 people; that is why we are so similar and our DNA is 99% exactly the same

5. How and where did our specie migrate? There are two different stories about why our ancestors migrated; the first one says that there was a period of dryness, so food got rare and they had to move. The other one is that an ice age had begun. In both cases they had to migrate to survive. We don’t know exactly how they were able to walk across the oceans to discover continents like America or Australia, but some researchers say that they were able to walk on the ice covered by foil formed during the ice age period.

7. Mutations and hereditary genes • 200 000 years ago our specie was all exactly the same ( dark skin, hair,eyes, same hight..) • Most mutations are due to the environment our ancestors lived in. • When they moved to places with less sun they didn’t receive as much vitamin D so there genes slowly changed, for example the melanin wasn’t as pigmented which triggered mutations like lighter skin, eye, color, hair… • So if you don’t have dark hair, dark skin and dark eyes you are scientifically speaking a mutant. • These mutations took hundred of thousands of years and as we evolve more mutations might occur with time.

8. Even though most mutations appeared because of the environment some just appear after a series of mutations in one gene • For example red hair is a genetic trait caused by a series of mutations in a gene located on the 16 chromosome (MC1R).That mutation may have come first in Europe because of the Netherlands who lived there and had red hair , so since they had a lineage with the first modern humans they could have past that gene to their children. • Scientifics also know that blonde people do not have the same ancestor because if they did their DNA difference would lead to blonde hair. • That is not the same as other mutations like blue eyed people who seem to all have the same ancestor that gave them this gene or lactose intolerance which was given by a single ancestor.

11. sources • https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/ • http://www.humanjourney.us/diasporas.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans • http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24988-humanitys-forgotten-return-to-africa-revealed-in-dna.html#.U62GnY1g6K4 • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics • http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/one-species-living-worldwide • http://genome.cshlp.org/content/20/5/547.full • http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21112/ • http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/science/the-continuing-evolution-of-genes.html?_r=0 • http://www.nature.com/news/african-genes-tracked-back-1.13607 • http://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/click/Origins/01.html • www.bigmyth.com • http://media.hhmi.org/hl/11Lect1.html • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-511473/All-blue-eyed-people-traced-ancestor-lived-10-000-years-ago-near-Black-Sea.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color