Discussion Question 3

It’s clear that human genes have evolved in the past few thousand years. For example, the allele for lactase persistence (the ability to digest milk products) became much more common in human populations who raised cattle. This is an example of biocultural evolution, because a human cultural practice influenced the evolution of a gene. In our current environmental, what kinds of mutations or gene variations do you think would be most likely to evolve in humans through the process of natural selection. Provide a few examples. Try to be relatively realistic here and focus on single gene changes; you’ll get a chance to wildly speculate about human evolution later in the semester!