DRD4-7R

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Orchid?

No, it is not a new type of iPhone, or video recorder, or measurement, or even the launch code for your nearby missile silo. Give up trying to guess what DRD4-7R is because it is so small, so tiny, that you will never touch it. It could be inferred that cats have it, but that assumption would fall short when they returned home, every time. No, it is not explicitly manifested in any animal on Earth and it cannot be found in any plant or stone. But it is indeed part of our human wiring.

Many times throughout my adult life I have asked myself Why am I so intrigued with new things, new places, new feelings, and new people? Why do I start to get restless over a long period of time seeking new adventures? I accepted long ago that I have this Marco Polo type personality; I love to inquire. I love to explore! Why? If you understand the purpose and nuances of goalkeepers in sports, like hockey or my lifetime sport soccer, then you’ll understand this one: why did I choose to, no persisted in playing the position of goalkeeper? What sane person wants objects hurled or kicked at them hard? Then the other day I read a fascinating article in the January 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine ironically asking and answering my same questions! This totally explains my addiction to everything National Geographic! More please! I read further. Ah, dopamine. It’s the dopamine! Hmm, duh.

Or dandelion?

For those of you with a slight variant of dopamine than perhaps I and others may have, dopamine “is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses, and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson’s Disease, and people with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction. The presence of a certain kind of dopamine receptor is also associated with sensation-seeking” according to Psychology Today. Not so coincidentally, though I am not an “addict,” several of my extended family members are addicts…as well as my sister. I guess I selfishly stole most of it from mother’s womb before my sister could snatch any. I know she’ll argue this, but I was always quicker than her! And not surprisingly, several laboratory studies in Europe, Israel, and the U.S. have found that a lack of the 7R variant is linked to depression or lower motivation. I found this result very interesting.

As I continued to read, in my mind all the dots — from the broad picture down to the microscopic — were connecting and making perfect sense; perfect harmony like a homecoming. But not permanent! A homecoming and going! And my fascination with bird cages — naturally with an open door or no door — now made sense too.

Orchids versus Dandelions

Am I an orchid thriving in stimulating environments, or am I a dandelion that manages to adapt and survive in harsh environments?

Perhaps the better question would be could there be hybrids of the two? David Dobbs has written several articles on this gene and the genetic-cultural roots of human temperament, and is the writer of this National Geographic article that has captivated me. He explains:

“If an urge to explore rises in us innately, perhaps its foundation lies within our genome. In fact, there is a mutation that pops up frequently in such discussions: a variant of a gene called DRD4, which helps control dopamine, a chemical brain messenger important in learning and reward. Researchers have repeatedly tied the variant, known as DRD4-7R and carried by roughly 20 percent of all humans, to curiosity and restlessness. Dozens of human studies have found that 7R makes people more likely to take risks; explore new places, ideas, foods, relationships [guilty in the 1st degree there!], drugs, or sexual opportunities [should I say it again?]; and generally embrace movement, change, and adventure. Studies in animals simulating 7R’s actions suggest it increases their taste for both movement and novelty. (Not incidentally, it is also closely associated with ADHD.)”

"Take one 10mg tablet once daily; for severe cases take with liquor in a Hazmet suit."

“Take one 10mg tablet once daily; for severe cases take with liquor in a Hazmat suit.”

In another March 2012 article on Wired.com, Dobbs further explains:

“This revisionist hypothesis is known variously as the sensitivity hypothesis, the differential susceptibility hypothesis, or the orchid-dandelion hypothesis — a term that Thomas Boyce and Bruce Ellis coined based on the vernacular Swedish term “dandelion children,” who seem to grow up okay in almost any environment; to that they added “orchid children,” who thrive under good care but wilt under bad. It is a young hypothesis, hatched 15 years ago and obscure for most of that time. But in the last two or three years it has gained enormous traction, spreading through behavioral genetics, child development, and anthropology.”

At this point in my reading and research I feel as if I’m reading parts of my biography or journal called This Is Who I Am and Why. It helps me at least process further and understand so many how’s and why’s, like Why have I been ~~single~~ unmarried most of my life? Have I not been hanging around long enough in the right flower or weed gardens!? Does this explain my need for Zyrtec at certain times and circumstances of the year! Geeezzzz. It does make sense: like a love-hate thing for the beauty of new outdoor places, but then you discover all the annoying bugs, insects, reptiles, and yes, inevitably Medusa! No, I’m kidding…..about nature’s creatures. Hah!

On a serious note however, geneticist are also associating the 7R variant, and another: the 2R, back to our ancient ancestors in Africa 70,000 – 50,000 years ago. For a quick tutorial read my post Our Family Reunion.

Anthropologists suggest that this minority of humans are the reason mankind migrated out of Africa; to find new sources of food and a different way of life. Scientist do know that astronauts or cosmonauts, or whatever title the sponsoring group bestows on their explorers/adventurers, 7R is definitely found in their genetic code. They are the risk-reward breed and today they are found in many walks of life. On a spectrum left to right 1 through 5, left being pure orchids (1)….right being pure dandelions (5), I am firmly a two if not one-and-a-half. I most definitely get restless after long periods of routine. I am not saying I am ADHD and can’t focus — on the contrary I am very task-oriented — but I am most certainly not a permanent settler! This is probably why I have some, umm, excuse me….(ahhh-CHOU!) dandelion in me: I am happy to adapt….to what I want to adapt to….and as long as a few other Bohemians are around, then I will be first in line! Let’s go!

Are you an orchid or a dandelion? Or perhaps something in between? And why?

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Footnote — For the full Dobbs National Geographic magazine article, go to this link: Restless Genes

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Our Family Reunion

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Professor Taboo

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“Scientist Prove 7-Billion Earthlings All Similar!”

Quite a news headline don’t you think? But it isn’t that far off. Just as modern nuclear physics and quantum mechanics have shown that everything in existence on our planet is connected, including humans, years of DNA sampling and genetic research from around the globe increasingly shows that all of us are from the same family and same place. Indeed, socially and culturally mankind is very different all over the world. Yet much of our presumed diversity turns out to be only “skin deep.”

Human Genetics 101

The field of genetics and in particular human genetics is the study and research of inherited traits from paternal and maternal ancestors. Traits such as physical appearance are part of every human’s genetic code and are easily identifiable. However, other traits such as blood type or immunities are not so easily identified by the naked eye but can be through DNA, or genetic coding. The order of these genetic units gives a living organism, in this case a human fetus, instructions about how to be built and how to eventually operate. During the lives of a father and mother these units can evolve into mutations, or different instructions based on environmental factors such as diet and climate, as well as by external factors such as the spouse or partner and their internal and external factors during development. Over many generations these mutations become subtle or dramatic based on the ancestral story. For a more in-depth description of human genetics click here.

The Genographic Project

Primary migrations of the human race

In 2005 the National Geographic Society, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation, and a panel of genetic scientists led by Dr. Spencer Wells, began a monumental anthropological tracking of human migration patterns using DNA samples from over a half-million people (and rising) from over 140 countries around the world. What the project has revealed is nothing less than remarkable.

So far – and I emphasize “so far” – continued advances in DNA science and technology have shown geneticists that all mankind have evolved from mothers and fathers from southern Africa about 200,000 years ago. Then 154,000 to 134,000 years ago some began to migrate northward. This introductory map has been constructed over the last decade by geneticists Dr. Douglas C. Wallace of Yale and Cornell Universities, Dr. Peter A. Underhill and Dr. Peter J. Oefner both of Stanford University, and now continued by Dr. Spencer Wells and The Genographic Project.

Dr. Wells approaches the movement of mankind not from our distant ape/monkey ancestors of billions of years back as Charles Darwin attempted, but instead from a genealogical approach. Most of us can trace our ancestors back three, four, perhaps five generations back. However, beyond this point it becomes increasingly harder to find details about our ancestors; where they lived or moved, or how they lived. This brick wall is sometimes called the fog of history by genealogists when family specifics become sketchy and grey. Many times this is the result of catastrophic events where the record is lost or destroyed, or perhaps when wars and invasions wiped-out the population and the victors wrote their own ‘version of history.’ For example, my own particular family history – primarily my maternal history – at this point can only be traced back to the late 1700’s. We are unable to find more ancestral details due to harsh religious persecutions in central Europe at that time from which my maternal family were imprisoned or killed. Nonetheless, this isn’t a far rewind on the ancestral clock compared to what Dr. Wells and The Genographic Project have achieved.

Migrations after 7 years of DNA collections

Today the ancestral records can be tracked further back…much further back; like 40,000 years back. And due to the continuing advances in DNA research, we may soon discover much more than basic demographics of where we came from and who we belonged to. You may ask “how is that possible?” The answer is that our DNA code is a very, very long blueprint of molecular signatures; over 6-billion signatures going back to your…our earliest ancestors. Any moment when a signature changes and is passed on to a descendent this is called a genetic marker. It is from these genetic markers that geneticists like Dr. Wells have been able to trace backwards all of mankind’s migrations everywhere in the world AND where our earliest mothers and fathers originated. The above news headline would then read: We Are All Africanus-Humans! Imagine how popular or unpopular that news would be.

The Religious Sidenote

Cuneiform script from Mesopotamia

Before too many jump up and down hysterically that these genetic-DNA advances show scientific support for what the Holy Bible or other holy religious scriptures have taught for millennia, it must be clarified that the original mother and father discussed in this project were among a group of some 2,000 humans hunting and gathering together for survival. Those 2,000 were descendants of even earlier Homo erectus mammals. For the sake of simplicity for the masses, these geneticists have colloquially named the first known mother “mitochondrial Eve” and the first known father “Y chromosome Adam,” both from the 2,000 in southern Africa. These two parents should not be confused with the biblical Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – that would be a premature jump of some length. Keep in mind that when Homo erectus on through Homo sapiens began communicating to each other verbally and with cave art, it would be another 14,000 years before writing systems took place such as chiseled tokens, sequenced pictographs, and scripted cuneiform. The Semitic alphabet (earliest forms of Hebrew) did not become widely used for another 1,400 years approximate. Therefore, to force the religious testimonies into context with the current genetic evidence, the scriptural stories are based long after the original 2,000 Y-Adams and m-Eves, and hence tell a story of only one leg (if taken literally) of many migratory legs coming from Africa some 16,000 years and 640 or more generations later! That is an unimaginable and incomprehensible amount of events and variables well beyond prehistoric human memory and perception of the time. Therefore, to say the biblical story of Eden is from a very narrow genealogical lens would be a gross understatement. It is enormously unrealistic. It simply cannot be the one and only historical source.

Back to The Genographic Project

Like it or not as it turns out, we are all from an African family. “Within the last 200,000 years” explains Dr. Wells, “we all share a common ancestor; a mitochondrial Eve, a single African woman. What’s more amazing is…the Y-chromosome Adam only lived around 60,000 years ago.” What is inferred from this genetic discovery is that up until 60,000 years ago all of mankind resided on the African continent. It wasn’t until after this time that a subgroup migrated outside the continent. Why did this subgroup decide to leave then? Why didn’t they leave sooner?

The continent of Africa has always been the most tropical continent on the planet over the past 200,000 years. Above the Tropic of Cancer and below the Tropic of Capricorn most landmasses are cooler-to-frigid climates depending on the historical time period discussed. The bulk of the other six continents do not reside inside the warmer more moderate climates of the two Tropics. About 80 percent of Africa lies within the two Tropics making it the most ideal landmass to live during an Ice Age or glaciation. The last hard glaciation started ending about 70,000 years ago (see graph below). By 50,000 years ago the polar ice-sheets were a little larger than they are today. When the warming began, Africa began to dry out and the food sources diminished. Consequently, this is the time when groups began migrating north following their food sources onto other continents. This is the time when mankind’s physical, cultural, and linguistic diversities began.

It is at this point when Dr. Wells and The Genographic Project began the journey of tracing the origins and migrations of some 560,000 individual DNA samples from around the world. The project consists of three core components:

Genetic anthropology – with the use of a GenoChip the project is able to collect 150,000 individual genetic markers revealing a person’s extensive ancestral-relevant story.
Indigenous field research – collecting and analyzing data in cooperation with groups that have remained in local or regional areas for thousands of years. This connects more dots on the human migrations map.
Collective global DNA database – invite the general population to discover their own DNA ancestry through the Geno 2.0 Kit with a portion of the proceeds going toward conservation and revitalization of indigenous projects through The Genographic Legacy Fund.

What makes this project so profoundly revolutionary are the ancestral results for all of us. It will show your incredible family lineage and show it within the context of mankind, something never imagined or done on such a personal basis. This project connects you not only to your particular ancestral makeup, but all humans to our singular African community 200,000 years ago. This has to be one of the greatest evolving stories ever told. How many questions about the origins of you and mankind will be answered? Other questions the Genographic website asks:

“How many migrations out of Africa were there? What role did the Silk Road, with its caravans and bazaars, play in dispersing genetic lineages across Eurasia? What can our genes tell us about the origins of languages? How did the great empires of history leave their genetic marks on our DNA? And if we all share such a recent common ancestry, why do we all look so different?”

The last question above is one I find most intriguing as well as enlightening. As mentioned earlier, climate has played a significant part in shaping our physical bodies. With varying climates, some extreme, come varying food sources and subsequent diets. During abundant food sources or during scarce food sources, how the group manages the sources will decide their survival. And this determination, the question of how a group will survive is a question being answered on all genetic levels. Whether it is familial, local, continental, or as a global species, the question today is always the same on every level: how will we survive together? With this in mind, the operative word in that last question above is “look”. With the advances in genetic science and the continuing work of The Genographic Project, we have learned that on a genetic level every single human being on this planet is 99% alike. It is only the 1 percent outer differences, our “looks”, our adaptive evolving physical features of survival that are different.

A New Viewpoint

Earth seen from the ISS and human space-travelers

While orbiting the Earth inside the International Space Station 250 miles up, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev said while looking down at our home planet, “from space you do not see any borders… you feel yourself part of humankind, not just man from one country or one city.” Krikalev could not be more accurate. As if from a height of incredible omniscience, Sergei points out that Earth is not a child’s sandbox to be selfishly divided and toys hoarded by the biggest bullies. On the genetic level of inner space to the orbit of outer space, mankind is really the same. What we are capable of accomplishing in collaboration with each other is now demonstrated from the molecular to the cosmos without interruption thanks in part to The Genographic Project. I recommend everyone join, after all, we are from the same miraculous yet harsh place moving on the same journeys.

The adage “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst” comes to mind. As Earth’s paleolithic record shows, our planet can be abundantly sustaining as it can be horribly unforgiving. As the most dominant intelligent species, together we can learn, respect, and grow from it, or we can fight against her and our cousins and perish. It is a simple choice with a simple answer when all the understood parts, from top to bottom, left to right, atomic to macrocosmic point to the same overture:

Our genetic blueprints and Sergei Krikalev’s recognition from space agree, we are all simply humans from the same Earth-family; nothing more, nothing less…yet a little more and a little less.

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