U. scientist says human evolution is going strong

Other mutations concern "broken pigment genes," giving Europeans white skin, blond hair and blue eyes. The cause of this mutation is that after people moved out of Africa and into Europe, they needed a better way to get vitamin D.

The body produces vitamin D using sunlight. In Africa, with its abundant bright light, people can easily get enough sun. But in cloudy northern Europe, skin needed to be white in order to absorb enough sunlight.

In Asia, one gene suppresses body odor and makes ear wax dry. Another Asian mutation improves the body's ability to handle alcohol, he said.

Modern humans had a sort of diaspora from Africa about 45,000 years ago, spreading throughout the world, he noted. "Almost all of these things (evolutionary changes) we can identify are younger than that," he said. Historically, the mutations have tended to be local and stay within a region, not jumping from continent to continent.

Other members of the team are Gregory M. Cochran, a New Mexico physicist described in a U. press release as a "self-taught evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor of anthropology" at the U.; anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Eric Wang, a geneticist in Santa Clara, Calif.; and Robert Moyzis, a biochemist at the University of California, Irvine.

Harpending called himself "the gray-haired coach" of the team.

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com