Svetlana Borinskaya

Hamburg account

The famous American biologist Richard Dawkins called the human body a machine for the survival of genes. And it’s true: how much depends on which genes are preserved in us. But can genes influence human behavior? We decided to ask Doctor of Biological Sciences Svetlana Borinskaya about this.

Brainstorm

What is more important: heredity or upbringing? This question has been troubling humanity for many centuries. Guests of the Brainstorm studio are trying to find answers to it.

Stanislav Drobyshevsky

What actually determines a person’s behavior and personal qualities: teaching methods and upbringing or genetic inheritance? How much do our genes influence our preferences, beliefs or actions? In this video, Stanislav Drobyshevsky, anthropologist, candidate of biological sciences, associate professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, will tell you what the role of heredity is in human behavior and how much upbringing influences our lives.

Alexander Markov

After summarizing the results of genotyping hundreds of thousands of people of European descent, a large international team of geneticists and bioinformaticians identified 74 regions of the genome, variations in which significantly correlate with the level of education received by a person.

Svetlana Borinskaya

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Borinskaya, Candidate of Biological Sciences, leading researcher at the Laboratory of Genome Analysis, Institute of General Genetics named after. N.I. Vavilov RAS. Area of ​​scientific interests: genetic and sociocultural evolution of humans, genetics of behavior and gene-environment interactions.

Ilya Zakharov

What role does heredity play in the formation of the brain? What influences our lives more: heredity or environment? How does the twin method help in the study of heritability and heritability? Psychophysiologist Ilya Zakharov talks about this.

An international team of geneticists and psychologists used a sample of more than 6,000 pairs of twins to determine what factors determine the high heritability of English students' post-secondary exam scores. It turned out that not only general intelligence contributes to the heritability of exam results, but also many other traits, the formation of which also significantly depends on genes. This means that innate characteristics are more important for academic success than is commonly believed.

Ilya Zakharov

Are we different in intelligence at birth? What is more important: nature or nurture? Are there genes that determine our abilities? Behavioral genetics has been trying to answer these questions for over a hundred years. Ilya Zakharov, psychophysiologist, researcher at the laboratory of age-related psychogenetics at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, will talk about what conclusions the scientists came to and exactly how research is carried out in this area.

Helen Fisher

A person’s personality is determined by two interacting factors: culture (norms introduced by upbringing) and temperament (determined by genes, hormones and neurotransmitters). I study temperament. I began to look for the answer to Match.com’s question about why we fall in love with this or that person in neuroscience. I studied the literature for two years and became increasingly convinced that each character trait is associated with one of four hormonal systems - dopamine/norepinephrine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen/oxytocin. This pattern has been identified not only in humans, but also in monkeys, pigeons and even lizards.

Svetlana Borinskaya

Transcript of a lecture given by Candidate of Biological Sciences, leading researcher at the Laboratory of Genome Analysis at the Institute of General Genetics. N. I. Vavilova Borinskaya S. A.

Dissertations accepted for defense:

FEATURES OF THE INFLUENCE OF LOW MOLECULAR METABOLITES ON THE INTERACTION OF PROTEINS WITH LIGANDS

Study of the effect of neuroprotectors on neuronal stem cells after radiation and chemical damage

State of colon microbiocenosis during experimental dysbiosis and its correction

Glutathione transferases and glutaredoxins in redox-dependent processes of formation of drug resistance in tumor cells

Laboratory experimental study of the effect of a composite filling material with an antibacterial effect on cariogenic microorganisms of the oral cavity

GENETIC ASPECTS OF PRESPOSITION TO CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES IN THE POPULATION OF ARAB COUNTRIES

Full name	AIT AISSA AMIRAH
Citizenship	RF and Algerian People's Democratic Republic
Date of Birth	28.04.1990
Author Affiliation	PhD student at RUDN University
Place of work
Title of dissertation	GENETIC ASPECTS OF PRESPOSITION TO CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES IN THE POPULATION OF ARAB COUNTRIES
Science	BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Code and name of specialty 1	02/03/07 - Genetics
Branch of science 1	Biological
Code and name of specialty 2	No specialty selected
Branch of science 2	Branch of science not selected
Competing for a degree	Ph.D.
Where was the work done?	RUDN University
Faculty	Faculty of Medicine
Department	Biology and general genetics
Defense date	21.12.2016
Thesis	Text of the dissertation	Dissertation Ait Aissa A..pdf
Dissertation publication date	23.09.2016
Abstract	Abstract text	1 Abstract Ait Aissa A..pdf
Date of publication of the abstract	20.10.2016
Scientific supervisor/consultant 1		Manager's review.pdf
Opponent 1		Review by Borinskaya S.A..pdf Information about the opponent Borinskaya.pdf
Opponent 2		Review by E.V. Trubnikova.pdf Information about E.V. Trubnikov’s opponents.pdf
Leading organization

Olga Orlova: The famous American biologist Richard Dawkins called the human body a machine for the survival of genes. And it’s true: how much depends on which genes are preserved in us. But can genes influence human behavior? We decided to ask Doctor of Biological Sciences Svetlana Borinskaya about this. Hello Svetlana. Thank you for coming to our program.

Svetlana Borinskaya: Good afternoon. Nice to talk to you.

Svetlana Borinskaya. Born in the city of Kolomna in 1957. In 1980 she graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Since 1991 he has been working at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1999 she defended her Ph.D. thesis. In 2014, she received a Doctor of Biological Sciences degree, having defended her dissertation on the topic “Population genetic adaptation of humans to natural and anthropogenic environmental factors.” Area of ​​scientific interests is the genetic and sociocultural evolution of humans, behavioral genetics and environmental interactions. Author of more than 50 scientific publications and more than 100 popular science articles.

O.O.: Svetlana, over the past few decades we have become accustomed to the fact that geneticists periodically tell us that this or that disease has a genetic predisposition and people can inherit certain diseases. And more or less likely, scientists have already somehow learned to determine this. But when it comes to people’s behavior, non-specialists somehow get confused in their heads: can some bad behavioral traits be inherited at all?

S.B.: Studying the genetics of behavior is much more difficult than the genetics of simple hereditary diseases that are determined by a single gene. With such diseases: the gene is damaged - there will be a disease, the gene works normally - this disease will not exist. And with behavior there are many genes. It is very rare that the operation of any one gene greatly influences behavior.

Of course, a mutation was discovered in the Dutch family - the monoamine oxidase gene. And it didn't work for some of the men in this family due to a mutation. In women, everything worked normally due to the inheritance of this gene. And these men were inadequate in their behavior.

O.O.: What does this mean?

S.B.: They were aggressive. One beat his sister. Another tried to set the house on fire. There was such unmotivated aggression. This gene even began to be called the “aggression gene.” But in fact, such a mutation was only in this family. It has not been found among people anywhere in the world. When this gene was turned off in mice, the mice became unmotivatedly aggressive. But among most people this gene works. Some are slower, others are faster.

O.O.: Okay. But what does this mean? What is called criminal behavior. Is this related to genetics?

S.B.: Geneticists have long been looking for genes that influence this behavior by studying violent criminals and trying to see if there are genetic differences there.

O.O.: And it works?

S.B.: And from time to time articles appear in which it is written “they found this or that difference.” But the fact is that all these differences affect behavior, firstly, not in a strictly deterministic way, that because of this a person will become a criminal. And secondly, what these genes do is they influence behavior, making it 5% more likely. These 5% in our personal lives are nothing. This is 5% of the average temperature in the hospital. But this influence of many genes is weak. And these effects add up. At the same time, behavior, unlike a metabolic disorder, which, whether you like it or not, still exists. And behavior can be corrected by education.

O.O.: And we are trying to correct, roughly speaking, a genetic defect through education, right?

S.B.: Absolutely right. But here the question is not even that this is a marriage. About 5-10 years ago there were ideas that there are bad genes that influence a person to behave badly, and there are some good genes. Now the idea has changed. Now they say that there are gene variants that are more plastic, susceptible to environmental influence, while others are more stable. The carriers of these stable variants are not greatly affected by the environment. What does it mean?

That gene associated with aggression. Humans have a variant of this gene that works quickly. That is, a certain enzyme is synthesized there. And in the brain it quickly does its job. And there are those who have a slower one. But at the same time, if children were raised in poor conditions, this gene variant makes the behavior bad. And if in good ones, it, on the contrary, makes him better. If all babies were raised in the same size boxes after they were born, they would all be the same height, even though they are genetically different. Like in China when they made small legs.

O.O.: The leg size was adjusted.

S.B.: The genetic inclinations were not realized here, because the environment would have squeezed them and would not have allowed them in. And in a good environment they would all come to fruition. The height would be different. The same goes for behavior. It has been shown that the influence of genes on behavior is greater in wealthy families. In unfavorable, poor, difficult socio-economic conditions, the environment is so tight that genes cannot unfold and manifest themselves.

O.O.: Those same plastic genes that are most susceptible to influence. Does it follow from your words that good genes are stable genes, and dangerous genes are plastic? That is, if the gene works stably, is it good?

S.B.: It depends on the environment in which the child grows up. The carrier of such stable gene variants is somewhat protected in unfavorable conditions. That is, if the situation is difficult, then because of it he will not reduce his performance very much. But he won’t get enough in favorable ones. And carriers of variants that are influenced by the environment, that is, respond to the influence of the environment... In bad conditions there will be a bad result, in good conditions it will exceed the stable variant.

O.O.: Okay. If we are talking at the level of the fate of one person, here it is somehow understandable. You explained the situation, how some genetic mutations can be influenced in terms of behavior. But how can we explain some general things that arise in people’s behavior? Not long ago Oleg Balanovsky sat in our studio, talking about the research of geneticists and the genetic portrait of the Russian people. And, naturally, I asked him what he was like. It turned out that, firstly, it is double, and secondly, we are quite closer to Europeans than we can imagine.

Then the question is: why, for example, in Russia do they drink so much? If we are genetically quite close to Europeans, that is, we have no such genetic tendency to alcoholism, which manifests itself at the level of one fate, you explained that the probability is high. And if we talk about a whole people, then what should we do?

S.B.: When it comes to the metabolism of alcohol in the body, Russians are completely no different from Europeans. At one time they said that they have some kind of special Asian gene. There is no such gene. Genes do not determine nationality. Nationality is a cultural phenomenon. So is alcohol consumption. There are no genes that make Russians drink. Not identified. No matter how much they study, I think special genes for this will not be found. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the level of alcohol consumption was 4 liters per person per year. And they were already sounding the alarm that this was too much. In post-Soviet times, it was 15 liters per person per year in terms of pure alcohol, including women, old people, children, everyone. But it's not from genes. This is because alcohol is available. And in all European countries they also went through peaks in alcohol consumption. The government had to take restrictive measures.

Genes influence the tendency to drink alcohol. These are the genes that regulate the functioning of the brain. Indeed, there are options that make the likelihood of abuse slightly higher. Again, it depends on the conditions. And there are genes that affect the conversion of ethyl alcohol, alcohol, into a toxic substance - acetaldehyde.

O.O.: That is, this is how alcohol is broken down in us and how it is excreted.

S.B.: Yes. This is neutralization, oxidation of ethanol entering the body. A certain enzyme does this, works intensively in the liver and converts ethanol into the toxic substance acetaldehyde, which is then neutralized and excreted. It's just our biochemistry.

There are people in whom the accumulation of this toxin is accelerated. They accumulate it tens of times faster than others. Among Russians, there are 10% of people like this, every tenth. They drink on average 20% less alcohol. At the same time, we looked separately at groups of men with higher education and without higher education. Among men with higher education, consumption decreases by almost 2 times. Men with higher education, who quickly develop toxin, who feel unpleasant after drinking - they greatly reduce their alcohol consumption. And without higher education, this decrease is quite small.

O.O.: Despite the fact that it is very difficult for this person to drink, he still drinks almost as much as someone who eliminates alcohol easily.

S.B.: Yes, whose head doesn’t hurt so much after that. The expression of genes depends on the environment in which a person lives. People with higher education have higher life expectancy. For example, in Russia, during the boom in alcohol sales in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, life expectancy fell for men with a high school education or less. In general, for all citizens. I'm talking about men because they consume more alcohol than women. The effects are more noticeable on them. Life expectancy has not decreased among people with higher education. There is a very interesting study that looked at the life expectancy and health status of people who grew up in different socioeconomic conditions and people with different education. So, it turned out that the difference in well-being in childhood, good conditions compared to bad ones, gives an increase of one and a half years of life, and higher education, even if a person was born in poor conditions, in a poor, dysfunctional family, but received a higher education, an increase 5 years.

O.O.: That is, if we want to live longer, we need to study better. Is this the correct conclusion?

S.B.: You need to have knowledge in order to navigate the modern world. And this includes knowledge regarding one’s own health. That is, a person better understands how to maintain his health and the health of his children.

O.O.: You talked about the so-called not bad, but plastic genes. We have learned this, that we shouldn’t call them bad. They are plastic. But if we talk about the so-called good genes, about good heredity, tell me, is it possible to inherit happiness genetically?

S.B.: It’s not that a person directly has such a gene, and he will be happy in any conditions. But it has been shown that there are gene variants that influence whether a person considers himself happy or not.

O.O.: Regardless of how he really lives?

S.B.: Depends. I checked. We examined the answers to the questions of how happy a person is, and the gene variants are different. There is a gene that, under favorable conditions, apparently its variants do not differ. We do not see any differences in the level of happiness among carriers of different variants of this gene. And in bad conditions, one option immediately decreases, the proportion of answers “happy or not” among speakers changes. And the other remains, just stable - unstable.

O.O.: Despite the fact that their life is harder and more unpleasant, do they still carry some certain level of happiness in their blood?

S.B.: Yes, they still feel happy more often than carriers of the other option. The feeling of happiness is influenced by genes, the environment and the ability to cope with it, the so-called coping strategies, there is such a fashionable term now. This is the ability to cope with situations.

O.O.: But it’s interesting. I remember that about, it seems to me, 8-9 years ago there was an international project. They measured the level of happiness in Africa. These were sociological surveys, these were not genetic studies. So, according to sociological surveys, people felt happy completely regardless of the conditions in which they lived, and in the poorest countries people felt quite normal, and even cheerful and good.

So, I wanted to ask: if we compare this with the results of genetic research, those genes that affect the feeling of happiness, can we somehow identify a connection with nationalities? That is, say, people who are inclined, in whom happiness genes are more common, do they live, for example, in this geographical point or in another?

S.B.: Such research attempts have been made. And even conclusions were drawn that representatives of one nation are happier than others because they have such genes, or vice versa - this is absolutely incorrect to say. Because, firstly, the same gene variants, now let’s get into complexity, can manifest themselves differently in different conditions. The way they manifest themselves in China may be different from the way they manifest themselves in Denmark. If they manifest themselves differently even among representatives of the same nationality, but with different levels of education, then even more so they can manifest themselves differently in different countries, to the point that dietary habits can influence them.

Secondly, this is no longer a genetic question, people do not react to the level of their life itself, that 100 years ago or 1000 years ago they lived completely differently, they were also happy; people react to the gap with their standard of living that they see among their neighbors.

O.O.: There is such a well-known phenomenon when a person, being a multimillionaire, becomes simply a millionaire; he perceives this as just a fall, a catastrophe, downshifting, and so on. How can genes help him in such a situation? Does he cope better if he has a good set of happy genes?

S.B.: I think he needs to turn to philosophers, not genes. But genes also influence. Genes that control the transmission of nerve impulses are affected. We have such a “heaven zone” in our brains, and signals go there when a person does something evolutionarily good - eats, moves, dosed physical activity.

O.O.: Evolutionarily good is what is useful for the survival of its species.

S.B.: Eats, exercises, has sex (also necessary for the survival of the species). And in humans and in higher primates, for example, social approval. Praised - this zone works. And in some people, for genetic reasons, the fact that the receptors there have such characteristics, signals pass through this zone worse. That is, some stronger incentives are required. And it can be more difficult for these people to feel happy. Precisely for genetic reasons.

But this is not something that is 100% certain, such a gene means you will not be happy. Again, persecution of the population is reduced by 5%. Genes and behavior are such a complex area where so many things influence the outcome.

O.O.: Actually, how interesting. We perceive, when something has a genetic basis, that it is irresistible, that it is such a fate of fate in the ancient sense. But it turns out that based on the results of the research you are talking about, everything is exactly the opposite. Genes are the first challenge for a person, genetic inheritance or predisposition. Still, socio-economic factors and his own participation matter much more. Do I understand you correctly?

S.B.: Yes. Absolutely right. There is no gene that determines that a person will become a criminal or a millionaire. There are genes that influence behavioral characteristics and make one behavior or another more likely. I would say that diseases and such unfavorable social behavior, which may be associated with genes, are signs for which we have not yet learned to select the right conditions.

There is a disease called phenylketonuria; children are already diagnosed in the maternity hospital to identify it. It is not very common, one in several thousand. If detected, they give a special diet, and the child grows up practically healthy. If this diet is not given, dementia and other complications occur.

O.O.: How can we make sure that we all tweak these genes in the right way? A child is born, we determine his genetic portrait, and see what kind of set he has. And the parents look at the transcript of the tests, and the doctor says: look, your child has such and such a probability of such and such a disease, such and such a probability of such and such behavior. And his parents understand that we will teach him music one hundred percent, although they wanted him to be a hockey player, we give him protein or, on the contrary, we don’t give him, and so on. How long do we have to live before this picture?

S.B.: I think that such a picture will never exist. Because there are too many levels of gene expression. If we know everything about genes, then the recipe that the geneticist will give to these parents will be like this. Humans have 20,000 genes. The first gene predicts that if a child grows up in a poor, poorly educated family, this will be the result. If you are in a rich family, but without education, this will be the result. If in a prosperous state with education, without education, if next to him there will be this or that, and this is the weather.

O.O.: That is, it will be a set of combinations that parents will still not be able to perform, because...

S.B.: They won't be able to choose it...

O.O.: That is, what needs to be tweaked correctly, how much needs to be changed in behavior and conditions.

S.B.: It makes sense, and is now being done, to identify mutations that lead to severe diseases.

O.O.: That is, we see every year: geneticists are helping us more and more to avoid some dangers. What used to be called “predestined by fate.” Now they show that it is not so much fate, not so much destined. And something can be done.

And if we talk about possibilities, fantastic or real. Not long ago, the general director of the Kurchatov Institute research center, Mikhail Kovalchuk, spoke at the Federation Council. He told the senators that now in Western Europe and the United States there is a technological genetic opportunity to breed a special service person. A service person whose consciousness is limited, he has only certain behavioral properties, and so on.

S.B.: I am not aware of such genetic studies. I assume that I’m not the only one who doesn’t know them.

O.O.: Have you come across any publications on this topic?

S.B.: No, there were no such publications. But ways to limit human consciousness are widely known. And TV channels use just such methods. If people are constantly presented with strange information, it will become difficult for them to navigate this world.

O.O.: Do you want to say that what people hear from television screens has a much greater impact on their consciousness than what scientists can or cannot do? What is it like to take out a service person? He gives an example from the film "Off Season" and says that then it was fiction, but now it is reality. But do you know of any such research that they are working on this somewhere? Maybe they are classified?

S.B.: Geneticists do not do such research. And it’s quite difficult to classify something that doesn’t exist. But the media owns these technologies.

O.O.: We talked with you somewhere, probably 5 or 6 years ago. And then you talked about a very interesting study related to the adventurism gene. The fact that different peoples have the so-called adventurism gene, a penchant for some kind of adventurous adventures, travel, that it manifests itself in different peoples, occurs with greater or lesser frequency. But would you personally like to be the owner of some special gene? What, for example, do you regret: “oh, if only I had such a gene!”

S.B.: I conduct interdisciplinary research in different directions. They are very interesting. But I don't have enough time to do it all. I wish I had the gene to be able to do everything. Not open yet.

O.O.: Tell me, can you give some historical example of a person who had the worst genetic inheritance and who would have successfully overcome it? Is it possible to give us some kind of role model for the story that we were telling?

S.B.: I would say Milton Erickson. This is an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He developed the so-called Ericksonian hypnosis, an absolutely brilliant method. From birth he was color blind, he only saw purple well. Otherwise, he was not very clear with the flowers. And there were problems with hearing. Moreover, as a teenager he suffered from polio, and because of this he had problems with movement.

But this did not stop him from becoming a world famous person. I think he's just a genius.

O.O.: Thank you very much. We had Doctor of Biological Sciences Svetlana Borinskaya in our program.

Olga Orlova: The famous American biologist Richard Dawkins called the human body a machine for the survival of genes. And it’s true: how much depends on which genes are preserved in us. But can genes influence human behavior? We decided to ask Doctor of Biological Sciences Svetlana Borinskaya about this. Hello Svetlana. Thank you for coming to our program.

Svetlana Borinskaya: Good afternoon. Nice to talk to you.

Svetlana Borinskaya. Born in the city of Kolomna in 1957. In 1980 she graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Since 1991 he has been working at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1999 she defended her Ph.D. thesis. In 2014, she received a Doctor of Biological Sciences degree, having defended her dissertation on the topic “Population genetic adaptation of humans to natural and anthropogenic environmental factors.” Area of ​​scientific interests is the genetic and sociocultural evolution of humans, behavioral genetics and environmental interactions. Author of more than 50 scientific publications and more than 100 popular science articles.

O.O.: Svetlana, over the past few decades we have become accustomed to the fact that geneticists periodically tell us that this or that disease has a genetic predisposition and people can inherit certain diseases. And more or less likely, scientists have already somehow learned to determine this. But when it comes to people’s behavior, non-specialists somehow get confused in their heads: can some bad behavioral traits be inherited at all?

S.B.: Studying the genetics of behavior is much more difficult than the genetics of simple hereditary diseases that are determined by a single gene. With such diseases: the gene is damaged - there will be a disease, the gene works normally - this disease will not exist. And with behavior there are many genes. It is very rare that the operation of any one gene greatly influences behavior.

Of course, a mutation was discovered in the Dutch family - the monoamine oxidase gene. And it didn't work for some of the men in this family due to a mutation. In women, everything worked normally due to the inheritance of this gene. And these men were inadequate in their behavior.

O.O.: What does this mean?

S.B.: They were aggressive. One beat his sister. Another tried to set the house on fire. There was such unmotivated aggression. This gene even began to be called the “aggression gene.” But in fact, such a mutation was only in this family. It has not been found among people anywhere in the world. When this gene was turned off in mice, the mice became unmotivatedly aggressive. But among most people this gene works. Some are slower, others are faster.

O.O.: Okay. But what does this mean? What is called criminal behavior. Is this related to genetics?

S.B.: Geneticists have long been looking for genes that influence this behavior by studying violent criminals and trying to see if there are genetic differences there.

O.O.: And it works?

S.B.: And from time to time articles appear in which it is written “they found this or that difference.” But the fact is that all these differences affect behavior, firstly, not in a strictly deterministic way, that because of this a person will become a criminal. And secondly, what these genes do is they influence behavior, making it 5% more likely. These 5% in our personal lives are nothing. This is 5% of the average temperature in the hospital. But this influence of many genes is weak. And these effects add up. At the same time, behavior, unlike a metabolic disorder, which, whether you like it or not, still exists. And behavior can be corrected by education.

O.O.: And we are trying to correct, roughly speaking, a genetic defect through education, right?

S.B.: Absolutely right. But here the question is not even that this is a marriage. About 5-10 years ago there were ideas that there are bad genes that influence a person to behave badly, and there are some good genes. Now the idea has changed. Now they say that there are gene variants that are more plastic, susceptible to environmental influence, while others are more stable. The carriers of these stable variants are not greatly affected by the environment. What does it mean?

That gene associated with aggression. Humans have a variant of this gene that works quickly. That is, a certain enzyme is synthesized there. And in the brain it quickly does its job. And there are those who have a slower one. But at the same time, if children were raised in poor conditions, this gene variant makes the behavior bad. And if in good ones, it, on the contrary, makes him better. If all babies were raised in the same size boxes after they were born, they would all be the same height, even though they are genetically different. Like in China when they made small legs.

O.O.: The leg size was adjusted.

S.B.: The genetic inclinations were not realized here, because the environment would have squeezed them and would not have allowed them in. And in a good environment they would all come to fruition. The height would be different. The same goes for behavior. It has been shown that the influence of genes on behavior is greater in wealthy families. In unfavorable, poor, difficult socio-economic conditions, the environment is so tight that genes cannot unfold and manifest themselves.

O.O.: Those same plastic genes that are most susceptible to influence. Does it follow from your words that good genes are stable genes, and dangerous genes are plastic? That is, if the gene works stably, is it good?

S.B.: It depends on the environment in which the child grows up. The carrier of such stable gene variants is somewhat protected in unfavorable conditions. That is, if the situation is difficult, then because of it he will not reduce his performance very much. But he won’t get enough in favorable ones. And carriers of variants that are influenced by the environment, that is, respond to the influence of the environment... In bad conditions there will be a bad result, in good conditions it will exceed the stable variant.

O.O.: Okay. If we are talking at the level of the fate of one person, here it is somehow understandable. You explained the situation, how some genetic mutations can be influenced in terms of behavior. But how can we explain some general things that arise in people’s behavior? Not long ago Oleg Balanovsky sat in our studio, talking about the research of geneticists and the genetic portrait of the Russian people. And, naturally, I asked him what he was like. It turned out that, firstly, it is double, and secondly, we are quite closer to Europeans than we can imagine.

Then the question is: why, for example, in Russia do they drink so much? If we are genetically quite close to Europeans, that is, we have no such genetic tendency to alcoholism, which manifests itself at the level of one fate, you explained that the probability is high. And if we talk about a whole people, then what should we do?

S.B.: When it comes to the metabolism of alcohol in the body, Russians are completely no different from Europeans. At one time they said that they have some kind of special Asian gene. There is no such gene. Genes do not determine nationality. Nationality is a cultural phenomenon. So is alcohol consumption. There are no genes that make Russians drink. Not identified. No matter how much they study, I think special genes for this will not be found. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the level of alcohol consumption was 4 liters per person per year. And they were already sounding the alarm that this was too much. In post-Soviet times, it was 15 liters per person per year in terms of pure alcohol, including women, old people, children, everyone. But it's not from genes. This is because alcohol is available. And in all European countries they also went through peaks in alcohol consumption. The government had to take restrictive measures.

Genes influence the tendency to drink alcohol. These are the genes that regulate the functioning of the brain. Indeed, there are options that make the likelihood of abuse slightly higher. Again, it depends on the conditions. And there are genes that affect the conversion of ethyl alcohol, alcohol, into a toxic substance - acetaldehyde.

O.O.: That is, this is how alcohol is broken down in us and how it is excreted.

S.B.: Yes. This is neutralization, oxidation of ethanol entering the body. A certain enzyme does this, works intensively in the liver and converts ethanol into the toxic substance acetaldehyde, which is then neutralized and excreted. It's just our biochemistry.

There are people in whom the accumulation of this toxin is accelerated. They accumulate it tens of times faster than others. Among Russians, there are 10% of people like this, every tenth. They drink on average 20% less alcohol. At the same time, we looked separately at groups of men with higher education and without higher education. Among men with higher education, consumption decreases by almost 2 times. Men with higher education, who quickly develop toxin, who feel unpleasant after drinking - they greatly reduce their alcohol consumption. And without higher education, this decrease is quite small.

O.O.: Despite the fact that it is very difficult for this person to drink, he still drinks almost as much as someone who eliminates alcohol easily.

S.B.: Yes, whose head doesn’t hurt so much after that. The expression of genes depends on the environment in which a person lives. People with higher education have higher life expectancy. For example, in Russia, during the boom in alcohol sales in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, life expectancy fell for men with a high school education or less. In general, for all citizens. I'm talking about men because they consume more alcohol than women. The effects are more noticeable on them. Life expectancy has not decreased among people with higher education. There is a very interesting study that looked at the life expectancy and health status of people who grew up in different socioeconomic conditions and people with different education. So, it turned out that the difference in well-being in childhood, good conditions compared to bad ones, gives an increase of one and a half years of life, and higher education, even if a person was born in poor conditions, in a poor, dysfunctional family, but received a higher education, an increase 5 years.

O.O.: That is, if we want to live longer, we need to study better. Is this the correct conclusion?

S.B.: You need to have knowledge in order to navigate the modern world. And this includes knowledge regarding one’s own health. That is, a person better understands how to maintain his health and the health of his children.

O.O.: You talked about the so-called not bad, but plastic genes. We have learned this, that we shouldn’t call them bad. They are plastic. But if we talk about the so-called good genes, about good heredity, tell me, is it possible to inherit happiness genetically?

S.B.: It’s not that a person directly has such a gene, and he will be happy in any conditions. But it has been shown that there are gene variants that influence whether a person considers himself happy or not.

O.O.: Regardless of how he really lives?

S.B.: Depends. I checked. We examined the answers to the questions of how happy a person is, and the gene variants are different. There is a gene that, under favorable conditions, apparently its variants do not differ. We do not see any differences in the level of happiness among carriers of different variants of this gene. And in bad conditions, one option immediately decreases, the proportion of answers “happy or not” among speakers changes. And the other remains, just stable - unstable.

O.O.: Despite the fact that their life is harder and more unpleasant, do they still carry some certain level of happiness in their blood?

S.B.: Yes, they still feel happy more often than carriers of the other option. The feeling of happiness is influenced by genes, the environment and the ability to cope with it, the so-called coping strategies, there is such a fashionable term now. This is the ability to cope with situations.

O.O.: But it’s interesting. I remember that about, it seems to me, 8-9 years ago there was an international project. They measured the level of happiness in Africa. These were sociological surveys, these were not genetic studies. So, according to sociological surveys, people felt happy completely regardless of the conditions in which they lived, and in the poorest countries people felt quite normal, and even cheerful and good.

So, I wanted to ask: if we compare this with the results of genetic research, those genes that affect the feeling of happiness, can we somehow identify a connection with nationalities? That is, say, people who are inclined, in whom happiness genes are more common, do they live, for example, in this geographical point or in another?

S.B.: Such research attempts have been made. And even conclusions were drawn that representatives of one nation are happier than others because they have such genes, or vice versa - this is absolutely incorrect to say. Because, firstly, the same gene variants, now let’s get into complexity, can manifest themselves differently in different conditions. The way they manifest themselves in China may be different from the way they manifest themselves in Denmark. If they manifest themselves differently even among representatives of the same nationality, but with different levels of education, then even more so they can manifest themselves differently in different countries, to the point that dietary habits can influence them.

Secondly, this is no longer a genetic question, people do not react to the level of their life itself, that 100 years ago or 1000 years ago they lived completely differently, they were also happy; people react to the gap with their standard of living that they see among their neighbors.

O.O.: There is such a well-known phenomenon when a person, being a multimillionaire, becomes simply a millionaire; he perceives this as just a fall, a catastrophe, downshifting, and so on. How can genes help him in such a situation? Does he cope better if he has a good set of happy genes?

S.B.: I think he needs to turn to philosophers, not genes. But genes also influence. Genes that control the transmission of nerve impulses are affected. We have such a “heaven zone” in our brains, and signals go there when a person does something evolutionarily good - eats, moves, dosed physical activity.

O.O.: Evolutionarily good is what is useful for the survival of its species.

S.B.: Eats, exercises, has sex (also necessary for the survival of the species). And in humans and in higher primates, for example, social approval. Praised - this zone works. And in some people, for genetic reasons, the fact that the receptors there have such characteristics, signals pass through this zone worse. That is, some stronger incentives are required. And it can be more difficult for these people to feel happy. Precisely for genetic reasons.

But this is not something that is 100% certain, such a gene means you will not be happy. Again, persecution of the population is reduced by 5%. Genes and behavior are such a complex area where so many things influence the outcome.

O.O.: Actually, how interesting. We perceive, when something has a genetic basis, that it is irresistible, that it is such a fate of fate in the ancient sense. But it turns out that based on the results of the research you are talking about, everything is exactly the opposite. Genes are the first challenge for a person, genetic inheritance or predisposition. Still, socio-economic factors and his own participation matter much more. Do I understand you correctly?

S.B.: Yes. Absolutely right. There is no gene that determines that a person will become a criminal or a millionaire. There are genes that influence behavioral characteristics and make one behavior or another more likely. I would say that diseases and such unfavorable social behavior, which may be associated with genes, are signs for which we have not yet learned to select the right conditions.

There is a disease called phenylketonuria; children are already diagnosed in the maternity hospital to identify it. It is not very common, one in several thousand. If detected, they give a special diet, and the child grows up practically healthy. If this diet is not given, dementia and other complications occur.

O.O.: How can we make sure that we all tweak these genes in the right way? A child is born, we determine his genetic portrait, and see what kind of set he has. And the parents look at the transcript of the tests, and the doctor says: look, your child has such and such a probability of such and such a disease, such and such a probability of such and such behavior. And his parents understand that we will teach him music one hundred percent, although they wanted him to be a hockey player, we give him protein or, on the contrary, we don’t give him, and so on. How long do we have to live before this picture?

S.B.: I think that such a picture will never exist. Because there are too many levels of gene expression. If we know everything about genes, then the recipe that the geneticist will give to these parents will be like this. Humans have 20,000 genes. The first gene predicts that if a child grows up in a poor, poorly educated family, this will be the result. If you are in a rich family, but without education, this will be the result. If in a prosperous state with education, without education, if next to him there will be this or that, and this is the weather.

O.O.: That is, it will be a set of combinations that parents will still not be able to perform, because...

S.B.: They won't be able to choose it...

O.O.: That is, what needs to be tweaked correctly, how much needs to be changed in behavior and conditions.

S.B.: It makes sense, and is now being done, to identify mutations that lead to severe diseases.

O.O.: That is, we see every year: geneticists are helping us more and more to avoid some dangers. What used to be called “predestined by fate.” Now they show that it is not so much fate, not so much destined. And something can be done.

And if we talk about possibilities, fantastic or real. Not long ago, the general director of the Kurchatov Institute research center, Mikhail Kovalchuk, spoke at the Federation Council. He told the senators that now in Western Europe and the United States there is a technological genetic opportunity to breed a special service person. A service person whose consciousness is limited, he has only certain behavioral properties, and so on.

S.B.: I am not aware of such genetic studies. I assume that I’m not the only one who doesn’t know them.

O.O.: Have you come across any publications on this topic?

S.B.: No, there were no such publications. But ways to limit human consciousness are widely known. And TV channels use just such methods. If people are constantly presented with strange information, it will become difficult for them to navigate this world.

O.O.: Do you want to say that what people hear from television screens has a much greater impact on their consciousness than what scientists can or cannot do? What is it like to take out a service person? He gives an example from the film "Off Season" and says that then it was fiction, but now it is reality. But do you know of any such research that they are working on this somewhere? Maybe they are classified?

S.B.: Geneticists do not do such research. And it’s quite difficult to classify something that doesn’t exist. But the media owns these technologies.

O.O.: We talked with you somewhere, probably 5 or 6 years ago. And then you talked about a very interesting study related to the adventurism gene. The fact that different peoples have the so-called adventurism gene, a penchant for some kind of adventurous adventures, travel, that it manifests itself in different peoples, occurs with greater or lesser frequency. But would you personally like to be the owner of some special gene? What, for example, do you regret: “oh, if only I had such a gene!”

S.B.: I conduct interdisciplinary research in different directions. They are very interesting. But I don't have enough time to do it all. I wish I had the gene to be able to do everything. Not open yet.

O.O.: Tell me, can you give some historical example of a person who had the worst genetic inheritance and who would have successfully overcome it? Is it possible to give us some kind of role model for the story that we were telling?

S.B.: I would say Milton Erickson. This is an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He developed the so-called Ericksonian hypnosis, an absolutely brilliant method. From birth he was color blind, he only saw purple well. Otherwise, he was not very clear with the flowers. And there were problems with hearing. Moreover, as a teenager he suffered from polio, and because of this he had problems with movement.

But this did not stop him from becoming a world famous person. I think he's just a genius.

O.O.: Thank you very much. We had Doctor of Biological Sciences Svetlana Borinskaya in our program.

Full transcript of the lecture given by Candidate of Biological Sciences, leading researcher at the Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Institute of General Genetics. N.I. Vavilova Svetlana Alexandrovna Borinskaya April 17, 2008 in the club - literary cafe Bilingua as part of the project “Public lectures “Polit.ru””. The lecture was a continuation of the series (the beginning was the speeches of Kirill Eskov “Palaeontology and Macroevolution” and Mikhail Gelfand “Genomes and Evolution”), designed to introduce the current state of natural science.

Lecture text

Since almost 200 thousand years ago, man as a biological species appeared in Africa, he has continued the work of all his ancestors and successfully reproduced. Humanity multiplied so successfully that there was not enough space in their native Africa, and people went beyond its borders, settling Asia, Europe and, crossing overland, which was instead of the current Bering Strait, to America, they successfully settled there too. It is assumed that almost all currently inhabited corners of the Earth were occupied approximately 25-15 thousand years ago.

Thus, I immediately answered the questions about where man arose - in Africa, when he arose, and I can immediately say how he arose: he came from a monkey through natural selection, but it was not a modern monkey, but a common ancestor humans and other living great apes. Now all the most impatient people can relax, drink beer, because you have already heard all the main points, and until the end of the lecture I will present the details of this story.

Rice. 1. TREE OF RELATIONSHIP OF HIGH PRIMATES

Before looking in more detail at various aspects of human evolution, I will try to cover some more issues. From the point of view of geneticists, as well as some colleagues from related fields of science, for example, anthropology and zoology, the closest relative of humans is the chimpanzee. There are two types of chimpanzees: common and dwarf (bonobos). They separated relatively recently - 2 million years ago, and before that, about 6-7 million years ago, they separated from the branch that leads to man. Even earlier, the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans separated from the ancestors of the gorilla, the orangutan, and even earlier - from the ancestors of other species of monkeys (Fig. 1). And today’s lecture will be devoted to the questions of when, where, how and why the species appeared Homo sapiens.

I want to emphasize that I am expressing my personal opinion, and not the ultimate truth, so some of the issues that I want to cover are quite debatable, and I hope that we will have time to discuss them.

In order to understand how genetic changes led to the emergence of man, how genes changed in evolution and these changes “made man,” we will first consider a simpler question: how genes “make man” in individual development, which we can directly observe, and the study of which does not require any complex reconstructions of the distant past.

Rice. 2. GENE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

So, how do you and I come from a germ cell? To explain this, I copied a slide from Mikhail Gelfand’s lecture that I really liked and modified it a little (Fig. 2). In the last lecture this was called educational program, this is school knowledge, and I will remind you of it. Each gene has a structural part, which encodes a protein, and a regulatory part, which states when the gene should work and when not, i.e., under what conditions and during what periods of development of each cell this gene should be turned on, and when - switch off.

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When a gene works, an RNA molecule is synthesized from it - an intermediary that transfers information to ribosomes - machines that synthesize proteins. Proteins, in turn, perform a lot of work in the cell, build it structurally, and perform various catalytic functions. It has now become clear that RNA also performs many functions, only DNA retains the function of an archive, and it seems that no more functions have been invented for it. A person has approximately 30,000 genes, and the set of genes in all cells of the body is the same. There are exceptions, for example, red blood cells in mammals, where the nucleus is missing so that it is more convenient for them to carry oxygen, and there are simply no genes there. Or germ cells, in which, during maturation, the genetic material is mixed, and then it is divided in half. But these are special cases. So, in all cells of the body the set of genes is the same, but the cells are different: there are epithelial cells, there are hair follicles that produce hair, there is the gastric mucosa, etc. Hair does not grow in the stomach, and mucus does not secrete on the skin. Why? Because a certain set of genes works in each cell (Fig. 3). Many genes are silent, and different genes are silent in different cells. Figuratively speaking, we can say that in each cell its own chord of genes “sounds”, and, just as many different melodies can be played on the keyboard, so in the cells after fertilization of the zygote different chords begin to “sound”, creating different melodies and thereby leading the cells along different development paths (Fig. 4).

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Rice. 6. ACHONDROPLASIA

The set of genes in different people is approximately the same (Fig. 5). Each of us has approximately 30,000 genes. But there are small differences: some genes do not work in some people, the work of others may differ markedly. Sometimes these differences do not appear at all, but sometimes the difference is quite significant. For example, if just one gene responsible for the growth of the body does not work, the disease achondroplasia occurs: impaired bone growth and a number of other disorders. The result is shown here (Fig. 6): this is Velazquez's painting "Las Meninas", and the Infanta's favorite dwarf has all the signs of this disease. This is the result of a change in the functioning of just one gene - the growth hormone receptor gene.

Those individual differences that distinguish us from each other are the result of mutations, ancient or recent. A mutation is a change in DNA text. DNA consists of four “letters” - nucleotides, which record the genetic program for the development of an organism. Errors in the “rewriting” of these “letters” in the process of transmitting hereditary information from cell to cell, from generation to generation, are mutations. Some mutations persist for thousands of years, while others appeared only in our parents.

To explain how mutations change the structure of genes, I remembered an anecdote when a worker comes to hire a job and is asked: “What can you do?” He replies: “I can dig.” - "And what else?" - “I can’t dig yet.”

Rice. 7. GENE STRUCTURE

Rice. 8. HOW CAN MUTATIONS CHANGE THE WORK OF GENES?

Using this analogy (Fig. 7), I will try to explain how mutations change how genes work. So the gene can work, let's take this as a baseline. A mutation can change how a gene works or change its level of activity, or it can turn off a gene. In this case, turning off a gene or changing the level of its activity can be achieved due to mutations in the structure of the part, which spoil the protein product, or due to mutations in the regulatory part of the gene, and then, with a good structural part, the gene simply does not turn on and cannot say its word (Fig. . 8). If a mutation only slightly messes up a protein sequence or a regulatory part, in principle one can expect that a reverse mutation will occur and the gene will somehow be repaired and restored. But there are mutations when the gene is simply lost. And then the change is irreversible.

Like a conscientious worker, a gene can be very active, and this corresponds to mutations that increase the activity of either the protein encoded by the gene, and it begins to work faster, or the activity of the regulatory region, and then many copies of RNA are synthesized compared to the original situation and a lot of protein product.

We can hire many workers to get a job done quickly, and in DNA there is a similar situation where multiple copies of a gene are created. Just recently, a very interesting article was published that stated that people differ from each other in the number of copies of the amylase gene. Amylase is an enzyme that breaks down starch. And it turns out that peoples who eat starchy foods have an average of 7 copies of the amylase gene, while those who don't eat as much starchy foods have only 5 copies. The commentary on this scientific work was called "the photocopied gene." If you eat a lot of starchy foods, it is beneficial when you have a lot of the amylase enzyme, so in such groups, people who had an increase in the number of copies of the gene due to mutations had an advantage.

There is also a special type of mutation that affects only the regulatory region, and these mutations change the timing of the gene. A gene can operate at different stages of development, for a long time or for a very short period, and during the process of mutation the time of the beginning or completion of some processes, for example, bone growth, changes.

And the last type of mutation: this worker decided to change his specialty and learn to play the violin. There are mutations that change the specialization of the protein, and they evade their original responsibilities and change their “profession.” A new function is usually a change in the structural part of a gene.

Rice. 9. TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR GENETICS

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Now we know how genes work, how mutations change them, and we can now try to answer the question of how a monkey turned into a human. We give the following technical task to genetics - to turn a monkey into a human (Fig. 9). What should be done? The monkey has too much hair on its body, you need to turn off the gene that controls the formation of the hair protein - keratin, and there will be less hair (Fig. 10 and Fig. 1). Compared to humans, monkeys have very long limbs. It is necessary to reduce the operating time of the genes responsible for the growth of limbs, and they will become shorter (Fig. 12 and Fig. 13). Now it would be nice to add brains to the monkey (Fig. 14 and Fig. 15). Such genes that regulate brain size - not just one, but several - have been recently discovered. One of them is called the microcephalin gene, changes in which have been found in patients with reduced brain size. Then it turned out that humans differ in this gene from monkeys.

Rice. 16

What else should we add to our monkey? It would probably be nice if she learned to speak (Fig. 16). Genes that control the formation of brain structures necessary for language learning exist. One of them was found during a study of a family where speech disorders were common. This trait was transmitted as a disease with a certain type of inheritance; the affected members of this family could not master the rules of grammar, they could not learn to speak correctly, and they had a mild degree of mental retardation. The patients were found to have a mutation in a gene called FOXP2. Then it was shown that people differ from monkeys in this gene. In a study on mice, it was found that it works during embryonic development in a certain area of ​​the brain, regulates the work of other genes, determining which of them is included in the work at a given stage of embryonic development. Directs the work of genes that are involved in the formation of brain zones.

The genes that differentiate us from chimpanzees, which changed during the evolution of apes to eventually become humans, are identified by comparing the DNA of humans and chimpanzees. You've probably heard that there is a Human Genome Project and that human DNA has been completely read. Also, the DNA of chimpanzees has now been read, and, to a greater or lesser extent, the DNA of other primates. By comparing them, geneticists are trying to understand how we differ from other primates and find the genes that are responsible for the differences. They can be called "The genes that made us human." Those genes in which the accumulation of mutations led to the emergence of man. Mutations occur all the time, like grains of sand falling in an hourglass. It is assumed that the process of accumulation of mutations occurs at approximately the same rate, although there are exceptions. But many mutations, having arisen, immediately disappear. And some remain and are passed on to the next generation.

According to the sequence of DNA “letters,” humans differ from chimpanzees by approximately one letter in a hundred, while we differ from each other by one letter in a thousand. This is a rough estimate. The difference of one letter in a hundred is the changes that appeared in both the chimpanzee line and the human line after their separation. Is this a lot or a little? It depends, of course, on where they are located and what to change, because some mutations do not manifest themselves in any way (they are “neutral”), while others are very significant. Some genes are now known, changes in which led to the emergence of humans. They are being studied intensively. Therefore, after some time, geneticists will know which genes need to be changed in order to make a human from a monkey. We have a man and a monkey, we can compare them and find out what kind of genes they are. But how did this happen 5 million years ago, when the required result was unknown?

Let us dwell on one more detail: what are mutations and how do they arise? This is a change in the “letters” of nucleotides in the DNA sequence.

It is necessary to distinguish between the process of the appearance of a mutation in DNA and another process - that this mutation will not disappear immediately, but will persist for at least several generations or will spread and appear in people in the distant future. The process of mutation is a chemical process. They occur quite randomly, it is simply a chemical process that leads to a change in the molecule. And the spread of mutations in subsequent generations in humans (as well as in other organisms) is a population genetic process.

Rice. 17. APPEARANCE OF MUTATIONS AND FIXATION OF MUTATIONS

Rice. 18. DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS LEAD TO THE FIXATION OF DIFFERENT MUTATIONS

The picture (Fig. 17) shows a number of people who differ in some way. In the next generation the ratio will change, as some will not have children, while others will have many. After another generation, a change will occur again, and, for a random reason, some signs may disappear, while others may become universal. Changes in the frequency of traits can occur either randomly or purposefully, under the influence of selection. Selection is determined by environmental conditions, and different characteristics can be selected under different environmental conditions (Fig. 18). In some conditions, certain options, for example, dark skin, may be selected, and in others, light skin. Skin pigmentation is a genetically determined trait that has probably had the greatest social and political consequences in human history. But there are a number of other characteristics that have not attracted as much public attention as skin color, but, nevertheless, groups of people of different origins can differ greatly in the frequency of one or another characteristic.

Rice. 19. SELECTION OF GENOTYPES IN ATHLETES BY ACTININE GENE

It is easy to illustrate how the environment dictates the conditions of selection for a certain trait. When studying athletes, it turned out that they differ in the variants of the muscle protein actinin gene - this is a protein that is associated with oxygen metabolism in muscles. When there is a deficiency of this protein, aerobic metabolism increases, and when there is a lot of it, anaerobic metabolism occurs. Let me remind you: if we get tired and our muscles hurt, then this is an accumulation of lactic acid, which does not have time to oxidize due to a lack of oxygen. Those. the muscles work so intensely that the blood does not have time to provide them with the proper amount of oxygen to oxidize the metabolic products that appear. And then, during rest, they are oxidized and eliminated, and then our muscles stop hurting. It turned out that athletes who engage in strength and sprint sports, where there is a huge short-term load when the muscles work anaerobically, such athletes have genetic differences from ordinary people (Fig. 19). It turned out that in comparison with the general group, which was used as a control, these athletes had less frequent genes for “aerobic” protein. Particularly rare among them were variants when such “aerobic” variants of the actinin gene were obtained from both mom and dad. And among the Olympians, not a single one was found that both existing gene variants (the one received from the mother and the one from the father) were “aerobic”. Apparently, you cannot become an Olympian in strength sports if you received such a gene from one of your parents. In stayers who work on endurance, they have a higher frequency of the “aerobic” gene, and in Olympic stayers it is even higher. That is, a certain task assigned to these athletes produced selection, and if this selection were to extend to the offspring, say, only sprinters would reproduce, and stayers would not reproduce, then we would get a different ratio of the frequencies of these options in offspring. The characteristics of the offspring would change.

Rice. 20. SELECTION OF GENOTYPES IN ALCOHOLICS BY ALDH GENE

Another example of how the environment makes selection. In Southeast Asia, there is a common variant of the gene that controls the oxidation of ethyl alcohol, which causes, after drinking alcohol, the rapid accumulation of acetaldehyde, a toxic product of alcohol oxidation, the same one that causes headaches and other unpleasant symptoms. Almost half of the population of Southeast Asia does not have the enzyme that neutralizes this toxic substance. And in most alcoholics this enzyme is active. The ratio of frequencies of different gene variants in the general population and in alcoholics is shown in the figure (Fig. 20). It can be seen that in alcoholics the ratio is changed. There are fewer people who have this enzyme inactive, simply because when the enzyme is inactive, the buildup of toxic acetaldehyde prevents you from drinking enough alcohol to become an alcoholic. But this is an example of selection that occurs according to the immediate needs of the environment. How did selection occur in human evolution?

To consider this issue, I borrowed a fragment from a lecture by Kirill Eskov, and I will read it.

“Ramapithecus is one of the variants of the “Asian project”, which was parallel to the African one...” - this suggests that at the same time in different parts of the world the process of hominization was underway, i.e., the transformation of a monkey into a human. In Asia, a large upright walking primate was also created, but based not on a chimpanzee, but on an orangutan. There were, for example, wonderful giants - Meganthropus and Gigantopithecus. And one of the options was Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus. And it may very well be that over time they would even evolve to something. But in any case, the “African project” managed to do it earlier, and they solved the problems with everyone who interfered with them.

At this point, we constantly ask for the analogy that “a tender is being held.” Several design bureaus are given an order for a specific product. They put it up for competition, then there are bench tests, etc. Then, in the end, some disappear, and only one model is accepted. Therefore, the idea of ​​“the direction of evolution”, on which many copies have been broken, takes on flesh in this place, at first glance. In the evolutionist picture of the world, naturally, no one gives tasks. Because the question “for what?” is categorically contraindicated for science.” End of quote.

Rice. 21.

I will try to consider whether the customer was in the process of the person’s appearance, and if so, what exactly did he order. Here the diagram (Fig. 21) shows a tree of species that, like our species, followed the path of hominization, but did not reach the final stage. On the right in the diagram Homo erectus, Homo erectus, which originated from Africa and evolved in Asia before becoming extinct. At this time, in Africa, the hominid tree branched, and about 300 thousand years ago, one of the branches came out of Africa and successfully populated the Middle East and the southern part of Europe. It was a Neanderthal. We do not know how many branches remained in Africa. Among them were our immediate ancestors. About 60-70 thousand years ago came out of Africa Homo sapiens, which supplanted all other species. For a while Homo sapiens and Neanderthal existed in parallel.

Rice. 22. DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIOSPHERE

To find out whether there was a customer for this direction of evolution, I want to start from the very beginning: with the appearance of life on earth. According to modern ideas (not genetic), the Earth arose more than 4 billion years ago, and life on Earth appeared approximately 3.8 billion years ago (Fig. 22). This figure is not very accurate, but this is not important to you and me, but the only important thing is that life has appeared. A cellular form of life appeared, in the form of so-called prokaryotic or nuclear-free organisms, from which nuclear organisms then appeared, which then successfully became multicellular, and among them mammals appeared, and among them primates, and from the primates our ancestors emerged, and so on until we appeared and did not come here to listen to the lecture.

Moreover, each new level of complexity arises on the basis of the previous one. The previous one does not disappear anywhere and cannot disappear. Each new species must fit into the ecosystem in which it arises, must be adapted to the processes and food sources that exist in this ecosystem. And food on our planet was created before and is now being created by bacteria, fungi, and plants. And if bacteria are destroyed, the entire life support system on the planet will collapse. No one else can do their biosphere work for them. Animals consume plants, grind them up, thereby helping the cycle of substances in nature, since it is much more difficult to oxidize uncrushed large plants and return their components to the biosphere; fungi and bacteria cannot cope. And predatory animals collect, so to speak, the cream of the biosphere - they receive concentrated resources that you just have to manage to catch. Along the way, they keep these resources in good athletic shape so that they get caught. This is, in a very simplified form, the current distribution of ecological functions between different organisms.

A similar distribution has always existed. Someone always ate someone, returning the organic matter that made up the food to the cycle of substances. And he himself was food for someone else. There was a completely understandable competition - to eat yourself and not be eaten by others, while leaving offspring. Evolutionary inventions and tricks to solve this problem are very diverse. Today we are interested in one of the solution options, which turned out to be relevant when other, simpler solutions did not work. This is obtaining benefits through cooperation of efforts and division of responsibilities. For example, symbiosis. Organisms unite, each does something useful, and under certain conditions they are more likely to survive together than separately. Through symbiosis, more complex nuclear (eukaryotes) emerged from non-nuclear (prokaryotic) organisms.

But there is another way to increase the efficiency of nutrition and protection - this is cooperation with your own kind. Transition from unicellular to multicellular. Then, at another level, the cooperation of multicellular organisms to form social systems, such as social insects (bees, termites) or social mammals. The next step - the unification of simple social systems into more complex ones, and then complex ones into super complex ones - was done only by man.

I will give a very brief overview of further social evolution, because... At Kirill Eskov’s first lecture, there was a question about how the ideas of biological evolution are applicable to social evolution. At the end of the lecture there are links to the works of specialists on this topic. I believe that the discussion here should not be about the applicability of ideas about biological evolution to social evolution, but about the fact that the evolution of both biological systems and social ones has general patterns characteristic of the evolution of systems in general.

The simplest stage of human social evolution is community. Communities can be egalitarian, where everyone is equal, or non-egalitarian, where some have more resources and power, some have less. The size of a community of wandering hunter-gatherers - cultural anthropologists call it a “LOCAL GROUP” - does not exceed two hundred people, but is usually equal to 20-50 people, extremely rarely in some very fertile areas it can reach 500 people (if we are talking about about sedentary superior hunter-gatherers or farmers). With a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the population density is approximately one person per 10 square kilometers. km. (at least among those who were studied in the 19th-20th centuries.) Hunting-gathering is a way of life that existed not only for hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, but before that existed among monkeys for millions of years.

If there are more than 200 people in a social system, then the organization should be more complex. A more complex level is the unification of several communities, called CHIELDSHIP. Unification most often occurs through conquest, with one of the communities becoming the main one, and the rest subordinate to it. An alternative to such a system is an egalitarian system, when several communities are united into a single social organism, but the main community is not singled out. An even more complex society is when a system of chiefdoms is formed, either through the conquest of one chiefdom by another, or through the division of an expanded chiefdom. The population of COMPLEX CHIEFHOLDS ranges from 5 to 30 thousand people; usually at this level of complexity, society has already switched to agriculture or cattle breeding.

An alternative to a complex chiefdom is TRIBE (this term has several meanings, one of which is used to designate societies with a certain structure). Tribal associations can unite groups that have already passed through the chiefdom stage, or they can form on their own by uniting societies of other types. SUPER COMPLEX CHIELDSHIP – a union of several complex chiefdoms. The polis organization, which has a complex history of origin, is possibly the result of the dehirarchization of complex chiefdoms. Further complication leads to the emergence of STATES, which are formed either from complex chiefdoms or from polis associations. States are not formed from tribes, because the tribe is not hierarchical.

Darwin's selection of the most successful combinations of inherited random variations of traits (here the traits are certain characteristics of communities, chiefdoms, etc.) is also applicable to social evolution, but the nature of the variation of traits, the traits themselves and the method of their inheritance there are naturally different.

In the scheme discussed above there is a small addition to the theory of evolution as it is presented in many textbooks: the identification of certain levels of complexity of systems.

That is, we were now considering not any changes and directions of evolution, but those in which the elements were combined into a more complex system. Into a system of a different level of complexity.

The simplest are nuclear-free prokaryotes, then more complex unicellular nuclear organisms appeared (as a system of closely interacting prokaryotes), then multicellular organisms (as a system of interacting cells), then social organisms (systems of interacting multicellular organisms), within which human society arose, and then There were stages of social evolution characteristic only for humans.

Rice. 23. ADDITION TO DARWIN'S THEORY

Such levels in evolutionary development (Fig. 23) were called metasystems by Valentin Fedorovich Turchin, and complication with the transition to the next level was called a metasystem transition. From my point of view, this is a very important addition to Darwin's theory in all its modern guises.

If complication is required, i.e., a transition to some other level of complexity, then this transition can appear simultaneously in different places and the one who transformed first gets an advantage over the others and can defeat them in the competition (as shown on slide 23 on the right side). This is exactly the tender that Kirill Eskov spoke about.

I am telling all this to emphasize that every species that appears on Earth must be adapted to the conditions in which it appeared. For example, when eukaryotes arose, they arose not in vacuum, but on Earth inhabited by prokaryotes. Then multicellular organisms arose, which had to adapt to life among unicellular organisms. The emergence of social organisms occurred in a very complex environment, including creatures and systems of all previous levels.

Rice. 24. STRUCTURE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AT THE MOMENT OF HUMAN APPEARANCE

And finally, when humans appeared, it was in an environment where groups of other primates had existed for millions of years. And here you can look for the request that the environment presented to these primates (Fig. 24). The fact that the fur has disappeared is, of course, not the main thing, and walking upright, although very useful, is also not the most important principle. What was important?

Reply from the hall. Thinking.

Borinskaya. What benefits does it provide? What functions does thinking perform?

Reply from the hall. Experience.

Borinskaya. That is, the transfer of experience from generation to generation. Monkeys already have it, and humans could also do it more effectively. The appearance of mammals was fundamental in the transfer of experience. Their two generations are required to be in contact, since the mother feeds the cub. This creates the basis for non-genetic transmission of information from generation to generation, i.e. for the emergence of culture. This method arose much earlier than man appeared. Until recently, it was believed that animals cannot have a culture, but now there are discussions about what to call the learning from adults that baby monkeys have: call it protoculture or culture, and where is the boundary that distinguishes a person from a monkey by this criterion.

So, thinking allows you to transfer experience from generation to generation and accumulate it. Is there anything else that thinking can be useful for?

Reply from the hall. Communication.

Borinskaya. Why is it needed?

Reply from the hall. To organize with other people to do some common thing.

Borinskaya. For example, successfully getting food or defending yourself from someone. We have become smarter than the neighboring herd, we run faster to the banana tree and pick bananas better. There is no need to complicate things any further. Still, further development took place. Any ideas? Why has man become increasingly smarter, more capable of communication and more organized over the course of millions of years?

Reply from the hall. Speech and language appeared.

Borinskaya. So what if there was a speech? There is no need to complicate things further. Sit back and eat bananas, you've already driven away all the monkeys.

Reply from the hall. Competition.

Borinskaya. A wonderful idea: but competition not between individuals within a group, but competition of the group itself with other groups close to the evolving group in terms of development, should have constantly moved a person towards wiser. There are other theories, such as that it was necessary to chew some bone or pick something out from somewhere with tools, but such requests are one-time, they cannot operate all the time. That is, if we assume that the environment’s request for wisdom, increased development of means of communication, was the presence of other groups with similar skills, and the winner was the one who cooperated better, was better organized in defense and attack, then it can be explained why a person needs It was steadily becoming smarter, developing speech and communication skills. And as we saw in the example of athletes or alcoholics, if there is a request, then the genes provide it.

Rice. 25. HOW QUICKLY DOES SELECTION ACT? HOW QUICKLY CAN THE REQUIRED SIGN BE FORMED?

I can give an interesting example of how quickly communication and social interactions can be developed. Some indirect answer to this question is provided by experiments conducted in Novosibirsk on breeding silver foxes. They were bred on farms. These animals have very good fur, but the animals themselves are very aggressive, it was difficult to keep them, so selection for the domestication of silver foxes was started. It was necessary to obtain less aggressive animals. This was successful: those animals that were less afraid of humans were selected for brood. They were selected like this: a person approached the animals and noted which foxes were less afraid of him, less likely to take aggressive poses, did not bare their teeth, etc. They were taken for brood. Over twenty generations of such selection, it was possible to obtain completely domesticated animals (Fig. 2). Foxes appeared, who, like dogs, fawned over the man, treated him very warmly and were very happy about his appearance. But besides this, some other changes took place in them. Their tail began to curl in a ring, just like a dog’s, their ears drooped and they began to yelp. And their fur also became bad. Although selection was not carried out based on these characteristics.

Glazkov. How was wool related to aggressiveness or environmental change?

Borinskaya. It turned out that these were related changes. Not all genes have yet been identified in these foxes, but some genes that have changed as a result of such selection are already known. These are genes that control the functioning of hormones and regulate the transmission of nerve impulses. The fact is that some substances that work in the nervous system during impulse transmission also participate in general metabolism, including in the production of pigments. There are common links in the synthesis pathways of substances involved in both the formation of pigments and signal transmission. Due to the fact that there was selection for one trait, another was also affected.

Glazkov. Is it just chance or does it depend functionally on behavior?

Borinskaya. This is a feature of the metabolic structure. I can give an example where anthropologists were trying to find out whether patients with schizophrenia were different from healthy people, they took a bunch of measurements and in the end they identified one characteristic: the patients had darker hair. This does not mean that all brunettes are schizophrenics. The fact is that in schizophrenia, the metabolism of a substance called dopamine changes, and the dark pigment is formed from the same precursor as dopamine. Therefore, when dopamine synthesis changes, some links in pigment synthesis are also captured.

Glazkov. That is, in this case, with foxes, is it an accident? They could theoretically become more beautiful.

Borinskaya. We'll leave this for later, and I'll tell you why everything on Earth evolves.

Rice. 26. CUSTOMER: BIOGEOCHEMICAL MACHINE OF THE PLANET?

If bacteria lived and did not change, why would they be bad? Why didn't everything stop at some level of development? Apparently there is a continuous request for the environment. Here in the picture that I took from the article by Georgy Aleksandrovich Zavarzin, an interesting aspect of the structure of nature is the circulation of substances (Fig. 26). Biogeochemical machine of the planet. And it, this machine, is controlled by living organisms, i.e., at every cycle and at every available process there are some types of bacteria that control this process. More organized creatures sit on them and eat them and control their numbers, etc. This system creates requests for the emergence of new species and the creation of new ecological niches. I assume that it was this system that ordered human evolution. And this evolution took place under the conditions that existed then. And at that time there were groups of animals, highly developed primates.

Rice. 27.

And here there is another important point, a non-genetic one - how man and his civilization interact with the biosphere. There are two models of interaction: one is that civilization is a kind of octopus that sits on the biosphere, eats it up, and soon everything will collapse. And the other is that civilization is inscribed in the biosphere, that there are some mechanisms for regulating the appetites of mankind, and the existence of such mechanisms. This idea is illustrated with pictures (Fig. 27), which I took from the presentation of geographer Dmitry Lyuri. The mechanisms that regulate human activity are very interesting. As resources are exhausted, a person has to change the methods of extracting resources, and, accordingly, the environment of his existence. And here we can return to genes again.

The way a person himself changes his environment as civilization develops is reflected in his genes. Two short illustrations of what happened to a person after he appeared. Let me remind you once again that it appeared as a hunter-gatherer, these are groups wandering around a certain territory, catching animals there and collecting edible plants. Previously, 15 thousand years ago, all people were hunter-gatherers. 500 years ago, only one percent of hunter-gatherers remained, and by the end of the 20th century there were very few such groups left, and all other people switched to a civilized way of life: agriculture, cattle breeding and other activities. At the same time, the environment can be divided into components: natural (climatic conditions, landscape), biogenic (availability of food, presence of infections) and anthropogenic - this is the part of the environment that man himself created.

Let's look at examples of genetic changes caused by these different factors.

Rice. 28. BERGMAN'S RULE

Rice. 29. ALLEN'S RULE

Rice. 30. ADAPTATION TO CLIMATIC CONDITIONS: ALLEN’S RULE FOR HUMAN

Adaptation to climatic factors. Back in the 19th century. it was noticed that if there are groups that differ in size, then smaller species gravitate to a warmer climate, and larger ones to a colder one, because if the bodies are large, then the loss of heat is less. This is true for humans as well. Anthropologists have long determined that the average weight of people in different climatic and temperature zones is different (Fig. 28). Another pattern found for is that the protruding parts of the body are longer where it is warm, shorter where it is cold (Fig. 29). The same examples of differences in body structure can be found in humans (Fig. 30). These differences are inherited, that is, determined genetically.

Rice. 31. SICKLE CELL ANEMIA AND MALARIA

Resistance to infections. It is known that in areas where malaria is found, there are protective mutations of the body to them. Interestingly, these mutations were discovered during the Korean War, when American soldiers were given the drug primaquine, which was supposed to protect them from malaria. But some soldiers died not from malaria, but from the medicine itself. When an investigation was carried out, it turned out that these soldiers carried a mutation in one of the genes, and they came from the Mediterranean or from Africa, i.e., from areas where malaria is common. So one mutation was discovered, then it turned out that there were several of them. They arose independently, but provided a solution to the same problem - resistance to malaria (Fig. 31).

Rice. 32. ACTIVITY OF LACTASE GENE LCT: ABILITY TO ABSORB MILK

Rice. 33.

A similar example is associated not with the environment, but with the appearance of new food. With the domestication of animals, humans gained access to milk. In all mammals, the baby can digest milk during feeding, and at the end of this period the enzyme that breaks down milk sugar disappears. But in some people, the synthesis of this enzyme continues into adulthood. And if this enzyme is not there, then you can drink milk, but then it will be very bad: your stomach will hurt, etc. It turned out that among Finns, 100% of infants digest milk, and of adults, only 85% have this enzyme and can drink milk, and 15% of adults do not have the enzyme and milk makes them sick. And among the Japanese, only 2% of the adult population can drink milk without consequences (Fig. 32). The mutation occurred in the regulatory region of the gene, which encodes an enzyme that breaks down milk sugar, and there are several of these mutations: one of them is common in Europe, the second in the Middle East, the third in Africa (Fig. 33). In Asia, such mutations have not yet been discovered, and the population there, generally, does not drink milk. The process of selecting mutations was the same: an order was given from the environment, and the genes implemented it.

Rice. 34. WORLD POPULATION

One final illustration of how selection can work. Here (Fig. 34) data on population changes in China over the past two thousand years is presented. The Chinese emperors conducted a census, not for the convenience of us studying it, but for the purpose of taxation. When this data was collected together, it turned out that every 150-300 years there were sharp drops in numbers, here, for example, from 60 million to less than 20. Such crises occurred not only in China, but also in other regions. After the introduction of modern medicine, they became less severe. During crises, several factors are at play: war, famine and epidemics. If these are famines or epidemics, then it is clear that crises will act as a powerful factor in the selection of those gene variants that will protect people from epidemics or make them more resistant to food shortages. Periodic fluctuations in numbers accelerate the action of selection and are accompanied by changes in genetic characteristics important for survival.

I would like to thank those whose discussions helped me prepare this report - Nikolai Yankovsky, Vladimir Spiridonov and Vladimir Aleshin. Thanks everyone for your attention.

Discussion

Dolgin. We will now have a very small discussion, because we have run out of time, so we will collect all the other questions and post them on the website and ask Svetlana to answer them on the website, and now very briefly, in blitz mode.

Question from the audience. Two questions: do you think that your theory is compatible with the theory of a higher principle or do you explain everything without referring to it? And second: from your point of view, can homo sapiens evolve and is it possible to calculate the time of its existence before it turns into something else?

Borinskaya. This theory is absolutely compatible with the presence of a higher principle, since the higher principle has never violated these rules.

Dolgin. The theory does not contradict, but does not need this beginning. Do I understand your answer correctly?

Borinskaya. Yes, that's absolutely right. So far there has not been a single argument that would require outside intervention. It was a game by the rules.

Question from the audience. Who came up with the rules?

Borinskaya. I cannot answer this question now; it is beyond genetics. Regarding human evolution: evolution is considered to be the formation of species - macroevolution, and microevolution - evolution within a species. Selection occurs all the time, both within one species and between them; there are simply two types: driving and stabilizing. Naturally, selection acts on you and me - not all living people will leave descendants. If the environment creates a demand that we cannot cope with within the framework of our genetic and sociocultural adaptation, then we will have to evolve into a new species.

Lev Moskovkin. Not a word was said about mitochondria, or about what, it seems to me, is your strong point -<неразборчиво>on the social field, just like Gelfand, for example, said nothing about splicing. This is the question.

Borinskaya. You can read about “mitochondrial Eve” and other aspects of geneticists’ study of human evolutionary history.

Question from the audience. I support that it is a pity that it was not said about mitochondrial Eve, but my question is about the keyboard from which nature extracts the process of evolution, extracts the chords that sound. For me, the historical process of the formation of this genome remained behind the scenes of your speech, and I don’t know what can be said about it. When it was so huge and wonderful, from which it was possible to extract almost everything, adding only a little to it, in what period of time was it formed, and was it smooth or jumpy?

Borinskaya. In terms of genome size, humans are no different from monkeys. The genomes of all mammals are quite close in composition, there are differences from more distant relatives, but then it would be necessary to make a separate series of lectures about this.

Question from the audience. But where are the breaks in genome evolution? Did he change along the evolutionary ladder smoothly or abruptly?

Borinskaya. A separate mutation appears abruptly - simultaneously, in the generative cells of the parents, and in order to enter the evolutionary arena, it must reach the descendant. If the mutation is not eliminated by selection in the early stages of development of this particular descendant, then he gets the opportunity to pass it on to his children. But from the point of view of evolution, nothing has happened yet - even if this mutation greatly changes some trait, its frequency is still negligible, one individual out of hundreds of thousands or millions. For a new species to arise, or even a new trait to be noticeable at the population level (i.e., a change that can be seen in the fossil record), the frequency of the mutation (and the corresponding trait) must increase. The rate of increase in frequency is determined, firstly, by the number of descendants that an individual can produce, and secondly, by the intensity of selection, that is, how quickly the descendants of other individuals who do not have this mutation will die. Let's say a pestilence attacked the population, and its numbers decreased by an order of magnitude. If the carriers of our mutation survive more successfully (they are resistant to infection, for example, or can digest some unusual food inaccessible to others, which turns out to be fundamental for survival), then after the pestilence there will be 10 times more of them, for example, from 1% it will turn out 10%. They will become noticeable at the population level. Then we will be able to say “a new trait has arisen in some individuals.” If the pestilence is repeated several times, their frequency will increase even more, or they will even displace everyone who does not have the mutation. Then we can say “the sign has changed for everyone.” This sequence of events is not like a leap. That is, this is a leap that includes several stages. And if we take into account that pestilence does not happen every evolutionary day, and that most traits are determined not by one mutation, but by many (especially when it comes to useful traits, with harmful ones it’s easier to break - not to build, you can ruin things with just one mutation), then “leaps,” one might say, become smooth and, when viewed on a small scale, undirected steps across evolutionary space. This space is not a ladder; a ladder arises when considering only one direction of the multidimensional space of evolutionary possibilities, and only those species that were unable to squeeze into the adaptation possibilities on the previous steps climb it.

This is a separate question, I tried to answer briefly here. I think that the sharpness of the jumps depends on the scale of consideration of the issue - what is considered sharp.

Question from the audience. Two questions: why the world of DNA turned out to be more efficient than RNA, and why evolution was limited to two strands, first RNA, then DNA, and did not switch to triple, quadruple, etc., polystrands. This is the first question. And the second: about what happened in the first lecture, when the type of tasks for what we now call a person were given, there were initial models, including the orangutan. And the orangutan model lost the competition to the model that exists today. And they should have met, apparently, some tens of thousands of years ago. What stage did the orangutan model reach and what was it like at the time of its destruction?

Borinskaya. Thank you for the very interesting questions. The first half of the question was to Gelfand, and the second to Eskov.

Dolgin. We are about to announce the opportunity to ask questions to Kirill Eskov, so everything will happen.

Question from the audience. Good evening. It is no secret that the world has long believed in the existence of many gods. And for a long time religion said that man came from, say, Adam and Eve, and science said Darwin’s theory, etc. - claimed that it was from a monkey. And now a theory has appeared one level higher that religion and science are all one thing in common, the theory of energy, etc. How can genetics explain this design? Because now they say that everything was created according to some plan, and at the same time this is science.

Dolgin. Still, one should not confuse science with non-science.

Borinskaya. Thank you for a very important question. Several years ago, in one of the leading journals, I think it was “Nature” or “Science,” there was an article called “The Religiosity Gene.” But this should be taken more as a joke :). Religion is not written in genes. Religion reflects the characteristics of our thinking, it is the cradle of our thinking, and science has existed for much less time than religion. And our thinking, especially mass thinking, has many features that have existed for a long time. And there is no contradiction in the fact that people have different pictures of the world. Some perceive the world in this way and demand evidence, while others perceive it in a different way and want to believe without evidence, or their system of evidence is built completely differently. In order to explore the relationship between different pictures of the world, we have a very interesting project that examines the geographical distribution of ancient myths, the history of their settlement, and it is very interesting to compare the history of the spread of myths with the migrations of peoples. It turns out that certain stories in myths have existed for more than 15 thousand years, and some, apparently, for more than 30 thousand years. Perhaps these stories came out of Africa, and this happened about 70 years ago. So some mythologems are very stable and, apparently, this is due to the laws of social evolution and some features of human thinking.

Question from the audience. That is, genetics is a certain picture of the world, just like religion, etc.?

Borinskaya. Science is a fundamentally different approach to understanding the structure of the world, which arose relatively recently. Natural sciences, I cannot say about the humanities, differ from religious doctrines in their perception of the world and the construction of their theses. Scientific research should not have logical contradictions. Scientists are a team of people who play by certain rules. They require proof not by miracles, but by experimental research. For religious treatises, logical consistency or experimental confirmation of the proposed revelations is not required.

The ability to reason logically is not common. A school certificate does not guarantee it. Even a higher education diploma does not guarantee it. If you do not distinguish between logically contradictory and consistent propositions, then for you there is no difference between science and non-science.

People believe what is comfortable for them, what fits their picture of the world (which may be logical in some parts, usually in the area of ​​practical experience of the individual, and completely illogical in others). And they take journalists’ statements at face value because they are catchy. Then science, esotericism, fortune-telling, predictions of astrologers, religion - all in one row. And they have no doubt that something there contradicts something. But these pictures of the world have completely different functions, and it makes no sense to mix them.

By the way, the gods of the past gave very useful recommendations - when to sow, when to harvest, when to fight, what environmental strategies to implement. Actually, those gods who gave unhelpful recommendations could not ensure the survival of their adherents and disappeared along with them.

Nowadays, the technological capabilities of mankind have increased so much that it is impossible to make decisions on tax policy, on the introduction of gene therapy, or on environmental strategies that will have global consequences based on the predictions of an oracle. You must have professional knowledge. Decisions requiring scientific knowledge cannot be replaced by religious injunctions. And faith does not need to be supported by scientific knowledge, otherwise it is not faith. Science and religion are different spheres of human activity.

This does not in any way prevent some scientists, including geneticists, from being believers. For example, when Jacques Monod discovered a scheme for regulating the activity of a bacterial operon, he decided that this was proof of the existence of God, because how else could it have turned out so wonderful and slender. This was simply his personal point of view, which in no way prevented him from doing high-quality work in the field of molecular biology.

Dolgin. But at the same time, one should not perceive the molecular biological picture of the world as adjacent to the religious one. They are on completely different planes.

Question from the audience. No, that's not true. There are common points.

Dolgin. There are no common points - they answer different questions. But there are approaches within religious systems that do not interfere with doing science, but there are others that interfere with this.

Materials on the topic of the lecture

• Problems of evolution. Website of Alexander Markov http://www.macroevolution.narod.ru/
• Cliodynamics. Website of Peter Turchin http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/people/turchin/Clio.htm
• Borinskaya S.A., Kartashova O.V. A systems approach to the study of evolution ("Biology". 2000. No. 23.). Ideas and practical advice for teaching evolution in school.
• Borinskaya S.A., Yankovsky N.K. People and their genes. M: Vek-2, 2006. 64 p.
• Teilhard de Chardin P. The Phenomenon of Man. M.: Progress, 1965.
• Turchin V.F. The phenomenon of science: A cybernetic approach to evolution. 2nd ed. M.: ETS, 2000. 368 p.
• Alternative paths to civilization / Ed. N.N. Kradina, A.V. Korotaeva, D.M. Bondarenko, V.A. Lynshi. M.: Logos, 2000. 368 pp.: