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- [Narrator] We are the paradoxical ape.
Bipedal, naked, large-brained.
Long the master of fire, tools, and language.
But still trying to understand ourselves.
Aware that death is inevitable.
Yet, filled with optimism.
We grow up slowly.
We hand down knowledge.
We empathize and deceive.
We shape the future from our shared
understanding of the past.
CARTA brings together experts from diverse disciplines
to exchange insights on who we are and how we got here.
An exploration made possible by the generosity
of humans like you.
(music ends)
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- [Ajit] Among the oldest questions of humans are:
Who are we? What are we doing here?
Where did we come from?
How did we get here?
And, where are we going?
As you know, two of these questions are tractable
to scientific inquiry.
And this is the question of anthropogeny,
explaining the origin of humans,
where did we come from and how did we get here.
And so pursuing this discipline involves most
academic disciplines.
So we incorporate people from many backgrounds.
This symposium is of course sponsored by CARTA,
Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny.
It is a transdisciplinary collaboration between faculty
at UC San Diego, Salk Institute, along with interested
scientists at other institutions.
And our mission is to explore and explain the origins
of the human phenomenon.
Our Co-Directors are myself, Rusty Gage,
Margaret Schoeninger, and our Associate Director
is Pascal Gagneux.
With special thanks to our major sponsor,
The Mathers Charitable Foundation in New York,
Howard Chester, the Executive Director.
And also a special thank you to Annette Merle-Smith
for support of our Graduate Specialization in Anthropogeny
at UC San Diego.
Thank you to the sponsors of this symposium's closed-
captioning on YouTube, Elizabeth Lancaster
and Eli Shefter.
And we're particularly grateful to our many individual
supporters who are listed here, but also at the web site.
They are part of the rotating slides that we'll see, also.
We'd like to honor them.
And you can become a CARTA supporter today.
And special thanks, of course, to the CARTA staff:
Ingrid, Jacquie, Kate, Linda, and Jesse,
and UCSD-TV Rich Wargo, Matt, Steven, Marci, and Jacob.
And, of course, Salk Media Services' Kent and Mike.
And, last but not least, our guitarist, George Svoboda.
(audience applause)
- So, I'm Rusty Gage.
As Sochi said, I'm one of the Co-Directors
with Margaret and Ajit and Pascal.
We're the co-sponsors of today's presentation to you all.
I'm going to give you a little bit of an explanation
for why we're having this meeting today,
how we came about doing this meeting,
and, I'm also gonna give you the first
of our presentations today on my approach and take to this.
So, some of you are long-time participants
in these symposia and will be somewhat intimidated probably
by the title of this current presentation,
Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms that are underlying
or evolving- the differences between humans
and non-human primates.
So, probing the molecular cellular differences.
Remember what Ajit told us.
He said that our goal is to really understand
where we came from.
How did we get here, and what is the mechanism
or what is the way in which this happened?
In truth, most of what we've been talking about for many
years, is the ways in which we actually examined this:
By looking at DNA from post-mortem tissue
from our closest relatives, even neanderthals now,
and sequencing that DNA and comparing with humans and
looking for the differences that exist.
We have post-mortem tissue itself where we can look
at brain structures and see how they may have changed
with evolution, anatomical kinds of information,
And of course, at the core of it we have archeological
evidence from bones where we can get brain casts
and look at how the brain size has changed.
And even, if you get a good cast, you can see
how certain areas of the brain have grown more
in different species or different evolving
creatures over time. These are endocasts.
And finally, we have archeological evidence that gives
insights into perhaps even the thought processes that
were going on while our species were evolving.
So, in the case of DNA, we have genes.
In the case of the post-mortem tissue, we have tissues
and slices and histological evidence.
With bones, we have inferences about size and structure.
And of course, archeological evidence,
we have cultural implications.
And so, a missing piece for this, for a lot of us has been,
really, what we consider to be mechanisms at the level
of cellular and molecular events.
And there is a growing interest in this piece here.
We call it "the missing link"- it's a joke.
(audience laughter)
A missing link in the sequence of events.
There are some recent technologies that have been developed
that have allowed us to get insights into tissues.
One, is using what you'll hear a bit about,
which is called induced pluripotent cells.
This is the ability to take somatic cells from any species
and convert them into an embryonic cell that can be
differentiated into all cells of the body including neurons.
So, for living organisms that we normally can't penetrate
and see how their brain functions, we can now look at
behavioral function, look at the genes while they're active,
while they're alive.
In addition, you'll hear a lot about model organisms
where once genes have been identified that might have
implications for certain growth patterns that are
unique to humans, they can be tested experimentally
in living animals, different species, that reveal to us
how that unique change in the gene may have fostered
a meaningful change that is relevant to how it is that
we became who we are.
So that is the motivation.
And, on a personal note, I would say that my hope is,
you know, hopes are always mixed with worries,
is the worry is not that we develop a whole new area
of research that just looks in towards ourselves exploring
more and more about the cellular and molecular mechanisms,
but rather, that these new tools become vehicles
for expanding outward into the other panoply of ways
in which we can study evolution.
There's an emerging idea now, sort a reemergence
of a concept in science called convergent science.
It was a term that was modified
from the concept of consilience,
but it is the idea that different
levels of science that normally talk specifically
to themselves, begin to understand how they can transmit
information from one level to the next.
And that's how we believe, or hope, that new concepts
and deeper thoughts will emerge.
So, our challenge, as most of us, as cellular molecular
biologists that are speakers in this symposium,
is to think about how we can use this information to stretch
this and expand to these other areas that are so important
for understanding the underlying principles.
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