What Darwin never knew

( A Few months back a friend of mine who is studying Biotechnology at a University in Canada arrived to SriLanka. My meetings with him happened to be truly a “science week”. Few of the Zoology books and medical books he carried  made me really curious about Darwin and his theories. What I read , learnt and heard  from him inspired me to write this )

The world’s many treasures are hidden and mysterious. The more it is Delphic the more we are in thirst to find it. The creation of the earth is still a baffling question for many of us. Some believe that almighty God created it. Some believe in cosmology, that twenty billion years ago from the cataclysmic explosion of a small amount of matter known as “atoms “the universe began. It says the earth was hot, small and dense back then and believed that with the time the space started to expand resulting the atoms eventually formed into stars and galaxies. The universe is still expanding and is getting colder as well in some parts.

However what makes the life on earth? A stunning diversity in the tree of life? An earth that had given birth to more than nine thousand species of birds, more than five hundred fifty thousand species of beetles and insects , twenty eight thousand times of fish and two million living species ? and above all what makes us HUMANS? Today the extraordinary science is answering these questions as to how a single species has given rise to many, including us – humans and how birds have evolved from dinosaurs. The science is working out the deep down, hidden mechanisms of these creatures to find out what makes the subtle offbeat on earth rather amazing. We celebrate Charles Darwin, the great man who made several attempts to understand the diversity in the environment. Quite well known as the father of Evolution , he was born 200 years ago and it is been nearly 150 years since he has published his work on “ The Origin of Species “ which established the backdrop to these mystical changes we see in animals. He understood that animals change and adapt to circumstances, a brilliant idea that one would have never looked for or found. However his work was not complete. He didn't know how evolution took place, how it worked and what physical forces would have contributed for this massive change in beasts. And right now you will know what DARWIN NEVER KNEW!

Darwin as a kid was very unusual and had a strange liking for the nature. He had the habit of collecting beetles, random leaves and any kinds of rocks, walking in the wild and watching animals. He wasn’t keen in studies. Darwin’s father was a very successful Physician at that time and wanted Darwin to study medicine too. He was packed to Edinburgh University, one of the finest medical schools in England. However medicine didn’t work well on Darwin. He was horrified by the operations done on diseased children at the University. He didn’t succeed in his laboratory work or exams instead he discovered his way as a naturalist. Quite enthused by nature, he starts working on evolution. He goes on a five year mission around the world collecting remainings of dead species and animal specimens which he thought that might help him to study the drastic differences in animals.

The “Galapagos” was one of the most important islands in his mission. “Galapagos” - an isolated island situated in the Pacific Ocean, thus had very unusual animals that one couldn’t find anywhere else on earth. Darwin’s records state that it had giant tortoises that weighed 600 pounds and huge lizards that swam and dived in sea.  Followed by Darwin’s journey today many naturalists make their way to islands across Galapagos. They say that there are hideous creatures, dark and black, quite resembling like the big huge rocks that one would find on the island. Further Darwin’s diary reveals the different kinds of tortoises he noticed. Some with huge and round shaped shells, then some that took the shape of an arc and some with flared shells. Darwin no doubt would have been astonished to see them yet he hadn’t been able to make sense of these varied features until he had made to Britain, his diary mentions. Turning to birds, he learns the different beaks of birds, some long, then slender ones and flat ones. The most amazing thing was that Darwin then started learning embryos. Watching an embryo would be one of the glorious miracles on earth. He learned that a snake embryo has some puzzling connection with four legged creatures. He came to know that whales that had no teeth as adults, had them as embryos. The tooth had disappeared as they grew and according to Darwin whales were descendants of creatures with teeth. Later human embryos provided him the most startling evidence. The slight spots he saw in the human embryo were to be found in fish. Amazingly in fish they turned out to be gills, where as in human they were found in the neck. Eventually Darwin showed humans are descendants of fish. His explanations little by little illustrated the vast diversity of animals.

For Darwin the nature was savage and brutal. The pattern that Darwin saw was that every animal is formed in a way to adapt to the environments they lived. The finches that Darwin found in Galapagos were evidence to Darwin’s question as to why the birds take different shapes. He found that every part of the body was used as a tool like to eat, crush, and tear. Simply to get hold of their prey. Further he proved that the difference lies depending on the environment they live. He found that on one island the birds had powerful beaks all because the island was full of a type of nuts that was tough to crack whereas  the birds on the other island didn’t have such powerful beaks because there were no such nuts grown instead there were flowers over seeds for food . Therefore their beaks took a probing beak that  allowed sucking.

Darwin realized that the variation takes place from nature itself. However there was one question that always triggered in his mind. Darwin’s children looked bit like him and his wife, yet they were not alike at all. Thus he thought that man too is a part of this “variation”. He knew that every human wasn’t the same. In this manner after years of painstaking researches he finally came up with his grand publication of “Origin of species”. Surprisingly Darwin got much of his work right. His ideas are unbeatable. However he had acknowledged himself that his theory contains many loopholes. Did he ever know what happens inside a body of a  creature in making these changes?

Thanks to modern science and technology, they’ve found finally a hidden mechanism that Darwin never knew. The finding of DNA is one of the greatest triumphs in the modern world, simply a real secret in life rather magical. Scientists have found that DNA develops the necessary systems of one’s body. Further when a baby is conceived its egg contains half the DNA from the father and the other half from the mother forming new combinations. This is why we may look like our parents but at the same time different too.  Science today has found that “mutations” are some other ways in which one can differ from another person. Mutation is a critical ingredient inside DNA that forms variations in creatures.

In 1990 the human genome project began to find what makes humans more sophisticated and complicated in their differences. It was found that a human body contains nearly 23, 000 genes. During researches they realized that many of the human genes were identical of those to the animals. However the question here was “how come man has many differences compared to animals if the human genes are identical to the ones of animals.” More and more researches found “switches “which is not really DNA but a part of DNA  that allows animals to use their genes in one place and not to use some in another place. So they knew “switches” are what really matters for the change in creatures. Switches explained more things. Over the years the mysterious process of losing legs like in the whales and how tails have grown shorter making it to vestiges of a pelvis in certain creatures is a result of these “ switches” that DNA consist in all animal bodies. This knowledge about DNA is now solving all questions to the mystery of the great transformations in animals.

And so over million years limbs evolved, some died and some diversified. Certain creatures got adapted to running, some for flying, and another for digging. The four limbed creatures have taken over a multiple differences since the ancient times. We have finally come to know that DNA is the element which created changes in bodies along with the switches that work at times. However can this new science explain the most important question of all “what makes us HUMANS?

“Humanness” is astonishing. We are the only kind of creatures who could perform many things. We are capable to think of others, to punish those who harm, to engage in music, architecture, science and even the creation of the microchip. Few experts on chimp DNA have found that 99 percent of Chimp DNA is identical to those of the humans. But something marvelous about the human hand hit the difference to those of Chimpanzees. Unlike for chimpanzees the human hand is capable of many things like, to grip, pinch and to write and draw with all fingers including the thumb which is more powerful of all that helps to hold any object firmly. A comparison of chimp DNA with Human DNA paved way to the finding of an intriguing switch of a DNA.  Pollard, a Bio statistician who conducted the experiment on human genome stood up with one different DNA. This particular DNA was exactly the same in chimps and chickens that consisted of two letters but strikingly humans had 18 different letters, thus a massive mutation! This DNA was found on the cortex of the human brain, the most key organ of humans. This is what makes the human brain work faster and understand better than any other creature on the earth. So it had proved that a slight change in a couple of DNA letters can make a profound change which Darwin knew nothing about. This implies that we are close relatives of apes and chimps except for that difference by 18 DNA letters make the human brain sharper than of a chimp.

If Darwin was here today he would have been much delighted to see how far his theory has been developed and led to find certain things that he himself couldn’t find. His work is simply wondrous and enormous because it’s his legacy that helped many scientists today to find out this diversity of life. We have grown more and taller in science and medicine because of his discoveries. He should be truly honored.