This Broken Gene Might Make Humans Marathoners

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Which broken gene?

a gene called CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase ( CMAH ).

And of course Evolution News wants to comment on long distance running.

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/origin-of-long-distance-running-more-evolution-by-breaking-things/

Some clues came 20 years ago, when Ajit Varki, a physician-scientist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and colleagues unearthed one of the first genetic differences between humans and chimps : a gene called CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase ( CMAH ). Other primates have this gene, which helps build a sugar molecule called sialic acid that sits on cell surfaces. But humans have a broken version of CMAH , so they don’t make this sugar, the team reported. Since then, Varki has implicated sialic acid in inflammation and resistance to malaria .

So, Dr. Ajit Varki is a friend of my mothers. They went to medical school together in India. We did a Veritas Forum together at UCSD not that long ago:

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Timing is interesting. I wonder if they wrote it in response to you posting it here?

I am getting that feeling. Maybe they are looking at what Peaceful Science is talking about.

That’s pretty cool. It’s a small world after all.

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The forum is really good. It is worth listening to his 15 minutes in the beginning. He talks about human exceptionality.

Well Discovery Institute, if you are listening in on this, come join the conversation!