Mutation: Difference between revisions

Massively reduced infant mortality may be the main driver of a recent increase in overall mutational load, leading to a higher incidence rate of disease, autism, obesity, sinistrality (left-handedness), asymmetry etc.

== Kinds of mutations that can occur ==

There various main types of mutations:<ref>https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation</ref>

{| class="wikitable"

!Mutation

|part of a chromosome gets moved onto another chromosome

|}

== Rise in mutations ==

Some evidence suggests that there are more people with deleterious mutations in the human population due to a number of factors, including but not limited to: milder ecological conditions, modern medicine,<ref>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9371795/</ref> advanced paternal age<ref>https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/parental-age-different-impact-autism-schizophrenia/</ref> and especially due to much lower infant mortality.<ref>https://doi.org10.1007/s40806-017-0084-x</ref> Due to the economic cost associated with a degraded gene pool, the [[wikipedia:demographic transition|demographic transition]] can be considered an instance of the [[wikipedia:tragedy of the commons|tragedy of the commons]] as the externalities of the degraded gene pool are foisted off on future generations at the benefit of avoiding the near-term costs of having women birth many children (rather than work) and the cost of a high mortality selection pressure on the offspring.

Mutational load may not be related to economic status very much. On the one hand, less mutated individuals are expected to rise higher in the socioeconomic hierarchy. On the other hand, the elite has a slightly lower infant mortality rates, milder living conditions and sometimes engages in excessive inbreeding, which may lead to the lower classes (who had been under conditions of Darwinian selection for longer, due to their lower standard of living) to be less mutated. Also, higher mutational load is only weakly related to certain traits important for socioeconomic success, such as general intelligence,<ref>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886915301161</ref> so one would expect that a lot of these highly mutated individuals would still be able to attain positions of social and economic influence.

== Some incels may have a high mutational load ==

Like [[Mewing|Mike Mew]], he mainly blames environmental factors like mouth-breathing, and modern food processing techniques making food require less effort to chew, though Erhlich also attributes some of this claimed decrease in jaw size to modern environmental pollutants disrupting the regular development of the jaw.<ref>https://news.stanford.edu/2018/04/10/paul-ehrlich-problems-modern-jaw/</ref>

Some of this decrease may also be due to increasing mutational load or selection pressure against larger jaws, though it seems these factors are insufficient to explain most malocclusions, or the secular decrease in jaw size, given the low frequency of the affected gene variants and the apparent rapid pace of this change in jaw size.<ref>https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/9/759/5872832</ref>

It is also not known how much of a role smaller jaws would play in reducing physical attractiveness. Overall facial masculinity is only weakly (if at all) linked to male physical attractiveness and lifetime mating/reproducive success,<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Facial_masculinity</ref> though mutations that would result in oddly shaped or maloccluded jaws would be expected to reduce physical attractiveness significantly.

== Deleterious vs beneficial mutations ==

Even though the vast majority of mutations are harmful or neutral, some mutations are beneficial. Mutation accumulation is how evolution works, adaptive mutations are preserved, and deleterious mutations (depending on ecological context) are eventually purged from the gene pool. An example of a beneficial mutation is the ACTN3 gene giving West African sprinters faster fast-twitch muscle fibers and a faster sprint speed.

Some experts have made dire predictions that the buildup of deleterious mutations in the human genome possibly spells disaster for the human race, such as Alexey S. Kondrashov, a prominent ecologist and evolutionary biologist.<ref>https://www.amazon.com/Crumbling-Genome-Impact-Deleterious-Mutations/dp/1118952111</ref>

Kondrashov, in particular, argues that removal of formerly harsh selection pressures (like high rates of infant mortality and disease burden) that historically served to limit the buildup of deleterious mutations in the human genome will lead to the proliferation of these deleterious mutations in the species, resulting in unprecedented increases in genetic diseases like autism, schizophrenia, and diabetes, etc.  

Substantial progress has already been made towards the development of these technologies, in particular, strides have been made in correcting deleterious mutations in embryos via gene editing.<ref>https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/02/540975224/scientists-precisely-edit-dna-in-human-embryos-to-fix-a-disease-gene?t=1577487765548</ref>

Perhaps the focus on deleterious mutations from the news media and others is because bad news is more attention-grabbing, humanity seems to have a negativity bias.<ref>https://www.adweek.com/digital/bad-news-negative-headlines-get-much-more-attention/</ref>

People are also possibly hardwired to socially exclude individuals with certain deleterious mutations in an effort to increase their own [[reproductive success]], and possibly also prevent these individuals from hampering group-cohesion/co-operation (in the case of deleterious mutations that damage social processing and social functioning, such as ones linked to autism).<ref>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260515593546</ref><ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301670151_Adolescent_Bullying_in_Schools_An_Evolutionary_Perspective</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Evolution]]

* [[Spiteful mutations]]

* [[Dysgenics]]

== References ==

<references />

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