Climate change may produce human mutations

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Climate change may produce human mutations that lead to higher rates of disease but may also have the potential for making mutants that are superior to the present human population. John H. Wilson with the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas identified the genes and the climate stresses that are most likely to change under climate change. The discovery was reported in the March 9, 2015, edition of the journal .

Wilson and colleagues found that extremes of heat, extremes of cold, oxygen deprivation, and oxidative stress all produce higher rates of mutation in the regions of human DNA that are most prone to mutation. Climate stresses have a unique pathway to produce mutations that involve the stimulation of DNA rereplication. The researchers found that limiting the availability of replication origin-licensing factor CDT1 reduced the rate of mutation.

The effects of climate and oxygen extremes are seen in normal cells and in disease cells. The effects can promote the increase of disease in normal cells and can speed up the spread of disease in diseased cells and disease producing cells like cancer. The mutation rate due to climate extremes and oxygen availability is also indicated to have played a role in human evolution.

In the event that climate change does produce the extremes of heat that are predicted, then mutation rates in humans will increase. The majority of the mutations will be detrimental to humans. There is the possibility that higher mutation rates could produce positive mutations that could produce "supermen" at least in some aspects of physical or mental ability. The result of climate extremes has been shown to have produced a genetic change in the Sherpa people of Tibet and Nepal in that their muscles retain more oxygen at high altitudes than other people.

Comment: Mutations may also be triggered by some form of electrophonic phenomena, some incidents of which may be identified as 'strange sounds' and linked to the increasing number of fireball / meteors we have witnessed in recent years. This is explained in Pierre Lescaudron's book, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection. Citing Z. K. Silagadze in his publication 'Tunguska genetic anomaly and electrophonic meteors':

Some genetic anomalies were reported in the plants, insects and people of the Tunguska region. Remarkably, the increased rate of biological mutations was found not only within the epicenter area, but also along the trajectory of the Tunguska Space Body (TSB). At that no traces of radioactivity were found, which could be reliably associated with the Tunguska event.

See also: Comets and the Horns of Moses - Chapter 4: Legends of the Fall and Genetic Mutations