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Published online 2 July 2008 | Nature 454, 21-23 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454021a
News Feature
Human evolution: Details of being human
A difference in one molecule led physician Ajit Varki to question what sets humans apart from other apes. Bruce Lieberman meets a man who sees a big picture in the finer points.
The human body does not welcome an injection of horse serum. Ajit Varki discovered this when, as a young San Diego doctor in 1984, he administered some to a woman with bone-marrow failure.
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Dr.Ajit Varki's work on human evolution basing on the changes in the structure of salic acid is interesting. Change from Neu5Gc (salic acid) in apes to Neu5Ac in human beings in the course of human evolution due to mutation in one molecule brings to light different aspects of immunity towards various kinds of diseases.
Who said that humans have evolved from apes? I would say that it was impossible for an ape to be mutated into a human and it is and will be unlikely anyone can demonstrate this. What might be true is that apes and humans were descendants of different multicellular ancestors which were descendants of different unicellular ancestors which were descendants of different acellular ancestors .... Or in other simple worlds, the origin of life was not a single ancestor (be it a cell or not a cell)! See more details in my publications accessible from http://im1.biz. Shi V. Liu (SVL@logibio.com)
Prof. Varki's enlightened research led us to the marvels of molecular chemistry to the path of human evolution and brings structural chemistry into the centre stage with the interfaces of conformations and biological space since millenia. Justifiably sialic acids can be a useful motif to design small molecule drugs against malaria to prevent high mortality particularly among the children and pregnant women of the poor population.