I thought she meant that by the question, but I didn’t want to leap ahead with that assumption until she clarified.
But I have the same answer as you - no reason to assume any “gain of function” she’s talking about re humans came BECAUSE of the chromosomal loss.
That’s what sets us apart from the other primates (or is there more?) so I’m just still wondering what accounts for gain & not mere preservation?
You’re still holding on to the unjustified assumption - there’s no need for you to assume the loss of chromosomes are the cause of any function gain you’re focused on.
The narrative in your head seems to be “we lost chromosomes and that caused us to gain function”.
The narrative in your head should be “at various times in our history, we did gain these functions, AND at some time in our history, we lost a chromosome or two”.
This happened AND this happened, not this happened because this happened.
What accounts for the gains is presumably the same thing that accounts for gains (almost) anywhere in evolution - mutations
We lost chromosomes, AND we also underwent many hundreds of thousands of generations of mutations - and, not because.
Quoting from the article:
“There is some evidence that something serious happened to people around 50,000-100,000 years ago. Scientists speculate that the total human population on Earth at this time was somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 people. It may be that this population was isolated from the rest of humanity and they happened to have 46 chromosomes.
// Of course we’ll probably never know exactly why people with 46 chromosomes replaced the ones with 48.”
And since they are assuming it is what separates us from other primates… (the 2a, 2b thing…) … I am curious what evidence they are talking about besides that?
That is not happening in my head. Nor did I write it in my words.
When you talk about “preservation of function”, is this not about the time when we lost the chromosomes?
I’m saying that the loss of the chromosome does not account for the gain of function (it only allows for preservation), so I’m asking…what does account for the gain of function? Plus see my last post because I asked a more specific question on top of that.
Mutations
Nothing to do with the chromosome loss.
Mutations don’t add new information.
If that’s what you believe then you haven’t been taking enough notes
Which mutations added information that just worked together just right so that they were not deleterious and did not result in loss of function, and did not merely result in preservation of function, but in gain of function?
You gotta study hard and find out
Side-stepper.
That’s the answer. You want to ask hard questions, you have to work hard for the answers sometimes. When scientists ask questions, they don’t just give up and call someone a “sidestepper” when they don’t have an immediately available simple answer, they do research.
I get it. You can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat. It’s fine.
I really appreciate the effort you’re putting in though, are you in a biology class or something?
I was in a class about DNA when I took those notes & that quiz in the screenshots^
Oh, interesting. Was evolution part of that class as well?
A little. You would know that if you read the notes & the quiz.