Abstract

What makes us human? Specialists in each discipline respond through the lens of their own expertise. In fact, 'anthropogeny' (explaining the origin of humans) requires a transdisciplinary approach that eschews such barriers. Here we take a genomic and genetic perspective towards molecular variation, explore systems analysis of gene expression and discuss an organ-systems approach. Rejecting any 'genes versus environment' dichotomy, we then consider genome interactions with environment, behaviour and culture, finally speculating that aspects of human uniqueness arose because of a primate evolutionary trend towards increasing and irreversible dependence on learned behaviours and culture — perhaps relaxing allowable thresholds for large-scale genomic diversity.

Author affiliations

1. Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
2. Departments of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
3. Program in Neurogenetics, Department of Neurology, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
4. Department of Genome Sciences, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Correspondence to: Ajit Varki^1,2 Email: a1varki@ucsd.edu

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