Neandertal Genomics and Empathy in Animals

Svante Pääbo and Frans de Waal spoke at the lecture series for the fortieth anniversary of Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute. I will summarize their talks.

The Gene for Language

Pääbo, who directs evolutionary genomics at the Max Planck Institute, is best known for his characterization of FOXp2, a gene that is thought to be associated with language. The gene was first discovered in an English family that had an inherited language disorder. Although you might think of language as being unique to humans, even the mouse version is extremely similar: only three of the 715 amino acids in the FOXp2 protein differ between humans and mice.

Studies of FOXp2 have uncovered two facts: (1) the gene is related to language and speech and (2) the gene has undergone a selective sweep, spreading to all humans, only very recently. The open question right now is if (and how) these two facts are related.

Neandertal Genomics

Pääbo’s current research is on decoding the Neandertal genome to look for what genetic differences are unique to the evolutionary lineage that eventually became us and to determine which of these differences spread by means of natural selection.

Random fact: the organs with the most differences in protein expression between humans and chimpanzees are the testis.

The Phenome

One thing that struck me that Pääbo mentioned is that the consequences of the personal genome—where you have all of your DNA sequenced—will not be as dramatic as everyone is claiming. This is because the actual DNA sequence tells you so little about the final phenotype.

The real challenge over the next five to ten years will be understanding the totality of our phenotype, or what Pääbo termed the phenome. There are so many characteristics of humans—tool use, language, culture—that we really don’t know how to describe precisely. Once we figure out how to do that, the geneticists can have their way with the data.

Empathy

De Waal’s work has focused on reconciliation, reciprocity, and cooperation in chimpanzees and other non-human primates. Instead of sitting in his armchair, pondering these topics, de Waal designs experiments to test cooperativeness and reconcilability. Rather than being cool calculations, he believes that these types of behaviors are emotionally mediated.

While we are quite familiar with assigning personality and emotion to fictional animals, as in books and film, we are much more cautious about doing so to real animals, especially when our dialogue is supposed to be scientific. De Waal’s empirical observations of chimpanzees tell him otherwise (likewise for anyone that has owned more than one dog or cat). That personality, emotion, and empathy are someone uniquely human flies against the pattern of conservation we see in all other evolutionary commonalities between humans and other animals.

In laboratory experiments, apes are able to classify scenarios based on their emotional content (for example, matching food with what we would describe as a happy or playful face). The abilities underlying this empathetic response is critical for cooperation and sharing goals. So empathy, rather than being limited to humans, is ancient, automatic, and multilayered.