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Although the DNA sequences that produce proteins in human brains are 98-99% identical to those of chimpanzees and gorillas, there’s a vast difference in brain size between us. Nazology covered research tackling this mystery, and it became a hot topic on 5ch’s Science News+ board. Rather than focusing on the sequences themselves, the researchers looked at where DNA is “open,” narrowing down candidate regions involved in human brain development to just 599 sites. The thread lit up with debates over “what even makes us human?”, pointed criticism that the paper’s claims only ever reach the level of “possibility,” and tangents connecting octopus intelligence to DNA folding structures.
The reason human brains alone grew larger despite 99% identical DNA has been revealed
Human brains grow much larger than those of our closest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas.
The part that expanded especially dramatically is the brain’s outer layer, called the “neocortex.”
Source: nazology.kusuguru.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
> That said, even the paper itself only states as a "possibility" that the two genes are involved in how cells proliferate and how many neurons they produce.
That just shows how hopelessly little we understand everything else — even iPS cell research can barely manage to make cell clusters or sheets, so growing actual organs or limbs seems like it might be forever out of reach.
Since they wouldn't be considered human, human rights wouldn't apply — they'd be treated as animals.
Labor laws wouldn't apply either. A kind of robot-animal.
Feels like some capitalist is going to actually try this. Musk, maybe.
>> These open spots can play a role in regulating the activity of nearby genes.
>> Overlaying the data from all three species, they found 225,395 comparable open regions.
>> Looking at the big picture, the differences split mainly by cell type first, lining up along the path from stem cells to neurons.
>> The broad characteristics of the cells were shared across all three species.
>> The next biggest source of difference was species itself.
>> So the team searched for spots in human bRGs (basal radial glia) that were open more strongly than in chimps or gorillas.
Combine that with the theory in Re: #6-7 and couldn't you precisely measure any given individual's intelligence?
Published: 2026-11-07 08:00
https://karapaia.com/archives/636827.html
>> A research team at the University of Vienna in Austria focused not on the genes themselves but on how DNA is folded inside cells, closing in on the secret behind octopus and squid intelligence.
>> Hundreds of millions of years ago, changes in the sequence of octopus and squid genomes may have altered how their DNA folds, possibly driving the development of their brains and nervous systems.
>> The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications (dated October 9, 2026).
>> Furthermore, to make sure this wasn't just a petri-dish phenomenon, they also narrowed it down to open regions in bRGs from actual human fetal brains.
>> What was left after that were the 599 sites that are strongly open in human bRGs.
>> This is a diagram of the two-stage filtering process used to find the DNA regions especially open in humans. The remaining sites are candidate switches that strengthen or weaken nearby gene activity, and the bottom right shows how many nearby genes each one is in contact with.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Behind the expansion of the human neocortex lies not just changes in the protein-coding gene sequences themselves, but also the three-dimensional structure of DNA (chromatin state) — essentially whether DNA is “open” or “closed.” The research team compared open regions in brain progenitor cells (bRGs) across humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, narrowing it down to 599 sites that are especially strongly open in humans. What split opinion on the thread was how to weigh results that amount to “identifying candidate regions” but still remain in the realm of “possibility.” The observation that the headline sounds definitive while the body text is full of cautious hedging nails the gap that often exists between science-reporting headlines and the actual confidence level behind the paper. The question “what even makes us human?” also points to a persistent issue in this field: how to define species differences that arise from such tiny genetic gaps. One point readers might easily misunderstand is that this research didn’t discover some new “human gene” — it’s still at the stage of finding candidate switches that regulate how existing genes behave.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary from the 5ch (Science News+) thread: 「[Nazology] The reason human brains alone grew larger despite 99% identical DNA has been revealed」.
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