“First, let me tell you how smart I am. That's how much. In fifth grade, my math teacher said that I was smart at math and, in hindsight, I must admit that she was right. I can tell you that time exists, but it cannot be integrated into the fundamental equation. And you don't have to believe me. Most of what people say is only partly true. And I say."
This is how Jim Kotsubek, a computational biologist at Cambridge, begins his story. A paper published in Nature Genetics in 2017 reported that after analyzing tens of thousands of genomes, scientists linked 52 genes to human intelligence, although no single option provided more than a few hundredths of a percent increase in intelligence. According to senior study author Daniel Postuma, a statistical geneticist at Vrieux University in Amsterdam, “It will take a long time before scientists can actually predict intelligence using genetics. Regardless, it is easy to imagine the social consequences of concern: students applying genome sequencing results to college applications; employers rummaging through the genetic data of suitable candidates; ECO,promising the child a high level of intelligence through the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system.
Some people are already ready for this new world. Philosophers like John Harris of the University of Manchester and Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford have argued that we will have a responsibility to manipulate the genetic code of our future children for their benefit. Also, the term "parental neglect" has been expanded to include "genetic neglect," suggesting that if we don't use genetic engineering or cognitive enhancement to improve our children, it will be wrong. Others, like David Correi, who teaches at the University of New Mexico, envision a dystopian future in which the rich will use the power of genetic engineering to shift power from the social sphere into the form of genetic code, creating literal blue blood.
Such problems are perennial; the public has been alarmed by the change in genetics ever since scientists invented recombinant DNA. Back in the 1970s, Nobel Prize-winning David Baltimore wondered if his groundbreaking work would show that "differences between people are genetic differences, not environmental."
As it turned out, genes have an impact on intelligence, but only in a broad sense and indirectly. Genes are involved in complex relationships that create neural systems that may not be possible to replicate. In fact, scientists trying to understand how genes interact to create optimal networks are faced with the so-called “traveling salesman problem”. The theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman in On the Origin of Order (1993) described it as follows: “The task is to start with one of N cities, go to each city in turn, and return to the beginning by the shortest route. This problem, which is easy to formulate, is in fact extremely difficult. Evolution first closes in on several working models, and then refines solutions for millennia, but the best that computers can do to create an optimal biological network from several inputs,is to use heuristics, that is, shortcut solutions. Complexity is reaching a new level, also because proteins and cells interact in higher dimensions. Importantly, genetic research does not diagnose, treat, or correct mental disorders, nor does it explain the complex interactions that give rise to intelligence. We will not be able to create a superman in the near future.
In fact, all this complexity can counter the ability of a species to evolve. Kauffman presented the concept of a "catastrophe of complexity", a situation in complex organisms, when evolution has already done its job and genes are so intertwined that the role of natural selection has diminished, giving way to the working capacity of an individual. That is, the species has worked its way into a form in which it can no longer evolve or improve with ease.
If complexity is a trap, then so is the idea that individual genes are elitist. In the 1960s, Richard Lewontin and John Hubby used a new technology - gel electrophoresis - to separate unique protein variants. They showed that different forms of the same genes, or alleles, were distributed much more variably than expected. In 1966, Lewontin and Hubby discovered the principle of "balancing selection," which explains that suboptimal variation in genes can remain in a population because they contribute to diversity. The human genome works in parallel. We have at least two copies of any gene on all autosomal chromosomes, and having copies of the gene will be beneficial, especially for diversifying the immune system, if evolution wants to try a relatively risky option while maintaining a tested and working version of the gene. Over time, genetic variants that may introduce some risk or novelty will come back or follow a positive genetic variant. If this has any consequence for human intelligence, then genes have a parasitic property to follow each other; none of them will be so excellent that it makes no sense to use other genes.
It is important to note that we have long known that 30,000 genes cannot determine the organization of the brain's 100 trillion synaptic connections, pointing to an irrefutable reality: intelligence, to some extent, is tempered by problems and stresses during brain development. We know that evolution is sometimes at risk, so we will always have genetic variations that are responsible for autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and schizophrenia; therefore, the notion that science will definitively solve mental health problems is fundamentally wrong. There are no excellent genes for evolution, only those associated with risk and optimal for specific tasks and conditions.
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Trust the biologist, he should know.
Ilya Khel