Human evolution is accelerating, US scientists find

the united states in the past 40,000 years, the pace of human evolution has accelerated, and in the last 5,000 years is rapid evolutionUnder conditions of great abundance of food, it is easier for human beings to survive and reproduce than ever beforeSo one might think that humans have largely stopped evolving, but that's not the caseThe team, led by University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpendin, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that they found that about 1,800 genes in the human genome are accelerated, about 7 percent of the total human genomeThe team speculates that most of the variation in accelerated evolutionary genes is due to the rapid growth of the populationAs the population surges, so does the number of genetic variants in the human genomeIn this case, the likelihood of the genes that are beneficial to survival increases and spreads throughout the populationAt present, researchers have not determined which genes are accelerating their evolutionBut their preliminary analysis suggests that some of the fast-evolving genes may be genes that adapt to humandietsstructural changes and resist new viraldiseases, such as those that allow adults to digest new food ingredients such as fatty acids, and some genetic variants that make humans more resistant to certaindiseases'Overall, human evolution has accelerated over the past 40,000 years, especially in the last 5,000 years, 100 times faster than before, ' MrHarpendin saidThis means that, by the very nature of genes, people are becoming more and more different, rather than becoming more "homogenized" as people are often thought to be integrating But some scientists have reservations about the findings "I don't deny that rapid natural selection is taking place in recent evolutionary times," said Kenneth Kidd, a geneticist at Yale University But there are so many changes in the genome that I can't believe it I think further data is needed to demonstrate it (Reporter Zhang Zhongxia)