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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 796
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 16, 2005 - 01:17 pm: | 
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Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.
The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.
Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.
In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being.
"It's a major finding in a very sensitive area," said Stephen Oppenheimer, an expert in anthropological genetics at Oxford University, who was not involved in the work. "Almost all the differences used to differentiate populations from around the world really are skin deep."
The work raises a raft of new questions -- not least of which is why white skin caught on so thoroughly in northern climes once it arose. Some scientists suggest that lighter skin offered a strong survival advantage for people who migrated out of Africa by boosting their levels of bone-strengthening vitamin D; others have posited that its novelty and showiness simply made it more attractive to those seeking mates.
The work also reveals for the first time that Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. That means that light skin arose independently at least twice in human evolution, in each case affecting populations with the facial and other traits that today are commonly regarded as the hallmarks of Caucasian and Asian races.
Several sociologists and others said they feared that such revelations might wrongly overshadow the prevailing finding of genetics over the past 10 years: that the number of DNA differences between races is tiny compared with the range of genetic diversity found within any single racial group...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501728. html?nav=rss_nation
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3157
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 16, 2005 - 01:49 pm: |
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Don't laugh, but me and Dr Frances Cress Welsing have always proposed this theory. It makes perfect sense that Mongoloid and Caucasoid stocks are mutations of the original Negroid one. Mutations occur in all species of nature so why would it be any different in Homo Sapiens? Welsing goes even further by saying the white mutants were driven off from their tribes by the black originals and that they've been mad at blacks ever since. LOL. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 799
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 16, 2005 - 10:35 pm: |
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LOL--Well, Cynique, you missed your calling--Academia could use a contrary mind like yours! I like the part of the article where it is speculated that the first mutated appearances of lighter skin were seen as "showy" and exotic by the darker folks. My, how the tables turned, huh? |
Kola_boof
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 992
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2005 - 03:37 pm: |
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I wish this had been published before my autobiography went into physical production.
It would have come in very handy.
And of course, most Africans have always believed what Frances Cress Welsing says.
I really like her.
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Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 435
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 18, 2005 - 06:47 am: |
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So all this time everything blacks have put up with lighter-skinned people is just evolutionary revenge?!
Well, I say we try and beat them at their own game.:D
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Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 436
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 18, 2005 - 06:49 am: |
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That last post was not to be taken seriously, so no lectures please. :P |
Edenson
Veteran Poster
Username: Edenson
Post Number: 64
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 19, 2005 - 10:07 pm: |
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Wow... I guess the 5 percenters were right, as sometimes they are. Whites weren't always here. It doesn't follow the story of Yaku as many know it, but it does show that there can't be light without dark.
BLACKMAN......... FOEVER THE ORIGINAL MAN. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 445
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 06:04 am: |
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What's "the story of Yaku", Edenson? |
Edenson
Veteran Poster
Username: Edenson
Post Number: 65
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 07:35 pm: |
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Uummm. I guess it's pretty much the theory that the black man is "GOD." Yaku was a black "scientist" who got some kind of prophesy to destroy the black race by making the white man. He grafted the white man from the black man over hundreds of years, I think it's 500 years or smething like that. He took these people to an island, and he made the brown skin people have kids wih each other, and everyone knows black people can have any color baby.... So what ended up happening over hundreds of years is the lighter kids were paired up with each other and they kept getting lighter and lighter, until finally the white man came to be. I know it sounds crazy, but you never know... I hope I told the story correctly. I'm sure someone on here knows more about Yaku and his story then myself...... You can google him too if you want. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 448
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 09:54 am: |
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--"You can google him too if you want."--
I did, thanks. It sounded familiar to me. I read that story on the NOI website some time ago. The man was called "yacub" with a "B" but I guess it's one of those names with multiple variations.
Creating a being to get revenge and destroy the world?! Yacub sounds like a frickin' 1950s comic book villian! LOL!
I wonder how anyone with a hint of rational thought would take that story seriously? It' s makes as much sense as the white supremacists believing we came from mud. ^^' |
Edenson
Veteran Poster
Username: Edenson
Post Number: 68
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 05:52 pm: |
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you're right... it probably is spelled Yacub... I was just too lazy to look it up... |
Serenasailor
Newbie Poster
Username: Serenasailor
Post Number: 11
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 05:47 pm: |
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I am a hug fan of Dr. Francis Cress Welsings writings. Does anybody have a copy of the Isis Papers. I can't afford it. I would love to get a copy of it. White skin is a genetic mutation a form of Albinism. Albinism is a disease in which the inflicted to not live very long lives. Notice that is why white people despise pale white skin so much. Also white people make up less than 9% of the worlds population while people of color make up 92% of the worlds population. White people know that they have a short time on earth that is why they are trying to kill off all of the people of color. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3249
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 01:35 pm: |
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I know someplace somewhere Dr. Welsing is thrilled to know that someone named serenasailor is a "hug" fan of hers although the good doctor probably hopes she won't be squeezed too tight by this nautical nit-wit. And what would we do if we didn't have an "expert" like serenasailor to spout all of those myths she is trying to pass off as facts. LMAO. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1278
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 04:15 pm: |
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InsiderEdition subscriber content
Fish helps solve puzzle of skin colour'Golden gene' found in zebra fish same one that whitened skin of early EuropeansBy CAROLYN ABRAHAM
Friday, December 16, 2005 Page A21
MEDICAL REPORTER
Genetic studies have humbled humans more than once. They've told us that we are 98-per-cent chimpanzee, that we share a great deal of our DNA with dogs and that even the fruit fly is a distant cousin.
Now, new research finds that humans and a common aquarium fish also have something in common. U.S. and Canadian scientists have discovered that a gene that lightens the scales of the zebra fish to a golden colour is the same one that helped to whiten the skin of the first Europeans.
A mutated form of this "golden gene," which most people of European descent carry, essentially suppresses the production of melanin, the pigment that gives skin its colour. Africans, East Asians and indigenous Americans carry an original form of the gene that contributes to their darker complexions.
It is the first gene known to have such a powerful effect on skin colour. Researchers hope its discovery further exposes the social irrelevance of skin colour in the debate over the significance of race.
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"The difference between African and European skin colour that caused such a long history of pain and controversy over race, all comes down to a change in [one chemical] in the three billion [that make up human DNA]," said Keith Cheng, a scientist at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine and senior author of the report, published today in Science.
"This gene affects pigment and there is no evidence that it affects anything else."
The work also sheds new light on the story of human evolution and offers science a novel target to study pigment-related diseases, such as melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Dr. Cheng initially identified the gene as a mutant that turns the normally grey-and-black-striped zebra fish golden. But researchers have now learned the gene likely mutated thousands of years ago, playing a major role in altering the pigment of the first people who headed north from Africa.
The original form of the gene found in darker-skinned people is considered the "ancestral" version because its chemical code is most similar to the one found in older primate species, such as the chimpanzee. By inserting the ancestral version of the human gene into the embryo of a golden zebra fish, the scientists were able to return the freshwater vertebrate to its normal grey tone.
"It's amazing that you can go from zebra fish to humans and find the same gene involved in pigmentation," said Esteban Parra, a co-author of the study and a molecular anthropologist at the University of Toronto.
Scientists have long theorized that the lack of sunlight in northern latitudes exerted strong pressures for the natural selection of certain genetic traits. In Africa, dark skin likely protected people from the harmful ultraviolet light effects of a tropical climate, Dr. Parra said.
But in Europe, darker complexions interfered with the body's ability to absorb enough ultraviolet light to synthesize vitamin D, important for bone growth. This means people with paler skin would have a survival advantage, he explained.
Mark Shriver, a co-author on the paper and a genetic anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the skin-lightening mutation may also have spread widely because it led to a visible trait that society found attractive.
The biology of pigmentation has long been a mystery. Several genes linked to albinism in humans have been identified, as have more than 100 affecting the coat colour of mice. Many genes are thought to be involved in human skin colour, but until the discovery of the golden gene, only a few minor genes had been found. One, for example, is associated with red hair and pale skin.
But the golden gene is estimated to account for roughly a third of the skin-colour difference between African and European populations and scientists only learned of it through the zebra fish.
The freshwater vertebrates, originally found in the slow waters of East India, are fast replacing the lab rat as a prime model for studies in genetics and development. Because of their prolific reproduction and because their embryos grow quickly in a transparent egg outside of the mother's body, zebra fish allow scientists to watch life develop under the microscope. The fish are also hearty, small and cheap.
Dr. Cheng, a pathologist, turned to the zebra fish as a model to study gene mutations that lead to cancers. Since the mid-1990s he had been hunting the golden mutant gene which, he said, was first identified in a pet-store batch of zebra fish in the 1970s. After he found it three years ago, he wondered about its role in humans.
"I needed to find someone who had collected DNA samples from light- and dark-skinned people," he said. "I called all around the world."
It turned out the researcher he needed worked not far from his own campus. Dr. Shriver had been studying genes linked to skin colour for several years.
While the prevalence of the mutation in Europeans suggested it might be related to lighter skin tones, researchers had to find a way to prove it. They did this by testing the DNA of more than 400 racially mixed people of African-American and Caribbean-British descent.
Dr. Parra, who at the time was working at Penn State with Dr. Shriver, said they found that people of mixed heritage who carried the same European mutation had lighter skin tones. Those who had the original version of the gene had darker complexions.
"This helped to eliminate confounding factors, making sure this gene was really involved in pigmentation," Dr. Parra said.
But key pieces of the skin-colour puzzle are still missing. Given that East Asians are lighter-skinned than Africans, the researchers suspect mutations in other genes will help to explain their paler complexions.
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