Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

DNA and then mathematically approximate the DNA of the common ancestor who gave birth to both species. Once the hypothetical genome of our common ancestor is mathematically reconstructed, a computer program will then give us a visual reconstruction of what it looked like, as well as its characteristics. He calls this the Lucy Genome Project, named after the celebrated fossil of an
Australopithecus.
    He even theorizes that once the genome of the missing link has been mathematically re-created by a computer program, it might be possible to actually create the DNA of this organism, implant it into a human egg, and then insert the egg into a woman, who will then give birth to our ancestor.
    Although this scenario would have been dismissed as preposterous just a few years ago, several developments indicate that it is not such a farfetched dream.
    First, the handful of key genes that separate us from the chimpanzees are now being analyzed in detail. One interesting candidate is the ASPM gene, which is responsible for controlling brain size. The human brain increased in size several million years ago, for reasons that are not understood. When this gene is mutated, it causes microcephaly, in which the skull is small and the brain reduced by 70 percent, about the size of our ancient ancestors’ millions of years ago. Intriguingly, it is possible using computers to analyze the history of this gene. Analyses show that it mutated fifteen times in the last 5 to 6 million years, since we separated from the chimpanzees, which coincides with the increase in our brain size. Compared to our primate cousins, humans have experienced the fastest rate of change in this key gene.
    Even more interesting is the HAR1 region of the genome, which contains only 118 letters. In 2004, it was discovered that the crucial difference between chimps and humans in this region was just 18 letters, or nucleic acids. Chimps and chickens diverged 300 million years ago, yet their base pairs in the HAR1 region differ by only two letters. What this means is that the HAR1 region was remarkably stable throughout evolutionary history, until the coming of humans. So perhaps the genes that make us human are contained there.
    But there is an even more spectacular development that makes Dawkins’s proposal seem feasible. The entire genome of our nearest genetic neighbor, the long-extinct Neanderthal, has now been sequenced. Perhapsby computer analysis of the genome of humans, chimpanzees, and Neanderthals, one might use pure mathematics to reconstruct the genome of the missing link.
    BRING BACK THE NEANDERTHAL?
    Humans and the Neanderthals probably diverged about 300,000 years ago. But these creatures died out about 30,000 years ago in Europe. So it was long thought that it was impossible to extract usable DNA from long-dead Neanderthals.
    But in 2009, it was announced that a team led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig had produced a first draft of the entire Neanderthal genome, analyzing the DNA from six Neanderthals. This was a monumental achievement. The Neanderthal genome, as expected, was very similar to the human genome, both containing 3 billion base pairs, but also different in key respects.
    Anthropologist Richard Klein of Stanford, commenting on this work of Pääbo and his colleagues, said that this reconstruction might answer long-standing questions about Neanderthal behavior, such as whether they could talk. Humans have two particular changes in the FOXP2 gene, which, in part, allow us to speak thousands of words. A close analysis shows that the Neanderthal had the same two genetic changes in its FOXP2 gene. So it is conceivable that the Neanderthal might have been able to vocalize in a way similar to us.
    Since the Neanderthals were our closest genetic relative, they are a subject of intense interest among scientists. Some have raised the possibility of one day reconstructing the DNA of the Neanderthal and inserting it into an egg, which may one day become a living Neanderthal. Then, after thousands of years, the Neanderthal may one day walk the surface of the earth.
    George Church of the Harvard Medical School even estimated that it would cost only $30 million to bring the Neanderthal back to life, and he even laid out a plan to do so. One could first divide the entire human genome into chunks, with 100,000 DNA pairs in each piece. Each one would be inserted into a bacterium and then altered