Env #1: Where I began on the factual path.

By the age of 17 I had written my first book, started writing several fanfictions (I had to practice the creative writing somehow...and if you're quite interested in seeing if it helped any, the stories are still out there somewhere), and sat my GCSE Exams, but I had yet to delve into the second most common thing I now do with my literary time: writing factual articles. 

I was pulled into the world of journalistic writing briefly at 13 when I took part in a programme run by the BBC for youth writers, and then didn't really dive back in, until the start of my sixth form years (that's year 12 in school, or the one where you are 18 years old if you have a different system) when a company called Lonza ran a Senior Scientist of the Year competition. Our teachers decided everyone in the A-Level Bio, Chem or Physics classes should write an entry piece, and I decided that if I had to, I'd bring that environmental side I loved into it. Being a Biology class student at the time, I thought what's more Biology than Genetics, and so the title of my first proper article was born: Are We Changing Nature's Genes?

Fun fact: this was the first article I wrote but actually the second I published. The first article I contributed into that was published was for The York Tab magazine about COVID 19 before the lockdowns...it aged well.

Are We Changing Nature's Genes?

Ani Talwar

 

You're in a cabin, on an island with a calm breeze, soft songbirds and sunny skies.

 

Image by Ani Talwar.
Image Description: Waves on the beach under a blue sky.

WHAM!

 

Out of nowhere a wave descends, 30 metres high, created by a creature 10,000km away. Your cabin doesn't stand a chance. Within seconds, it's gone, destroyed by some creature who sent that wave on purpose. Unfair?

 

Now, replace that island for an ecosystem, the cabin with a habitat, and the person inside for an animal. And that malevolent cabin killer: that's you.

 

You, me, and all the human race. But it's not just cabins anymore, it’s the actual qualities of the people inside them.

"The effects of rural homes on native species can be felt tens to hundreds of kilometres away," [1]

This does not refer to the people in them, or the materials used, but animals who won't even interact with us, are paying the price for our 'comfort'.

 

Take fish for example. They're hunted for their size, bigger fish make more food. But now, they’re evolving to shrink. Their size, once an evolutionary advantage; bigger fish’s offspring can swim, grow and survive better [2], is now the complete opposite. Big fish are now the hunted ones. Smaller fish survive, and as natural selection works, the animal with the characteristic that promotes survival is able to reproduce, increasing frequency of the characteristic. The outcome: fish are shrinking [3]. Furthermore, climate change due to global warming means oceans are heating, so fish need to increase their metabolisms to get enough oxygen out of water that is becoming oxygen deficient. In order to do this, they are shrinking in size so that their diffusion pathways are small enough and their cell number is small enough that the little O2 can be supplied to all their cells. [4]

 

That's a very large example, maybe you won’t ever experience unless you sit for years watching and measuring fish all around the world, so let's talk about something that’s easier to notice and measure: Lake Windemere, UK, and Perch fish. These fish lived normally once up until they were around 20 years of age, until a disease in 1976 wiped out 99% of their population. Now: Perch have evolved to become more sexually mature and reproduce before the disease hits them, and they have never been found older than 7 years. The shocking bit is that now scientists believe many diseases like this one are caused by humans. Us. You and me. [5]

 

This isn't a new development. Most students will probably have heard of the change in peppered moths around the industrial revolution in England. But it's not just moths, it's rhinos, and bears, and birds and fish.

 

Take your every day song birds, who now have had to change their songs to adapt to traffic noises, and those who can't are at a disadvantage. Singing may not be so detrimental, but what about the physical workings of the bird? Corticosteron, a steroid hormone released during stress in birds, is triggered by three factors:noise, pollution and a high population density. [6] Urban and forest living blackbirds, raised in the same conditions except for location, had their corticosterone levels measured by Jesko Partecke and his team, and it was found that urban birds had higher corticosterone levels than forest ones, leading scientists to believe the difference is genetic.

 

Does this mean that humans are the ones causing the genetic change? Well out of every other living thing on the planet, which of us produce most noise, density and pollution?

 

So we've established that humans can have an impact on even the genes of a species and how they evolve, but is it always bad? It has been found that bacteria can thrive in places that won't be suitable for larger organisms, so humans have actually created new environments suitable for microorganisms like sewage, contaminated water and deforested soil[7]. That's good right? It means we've helped something...but if we're at the stage where water contaminated with effluent is good, is it really that good?

 

These examples all result from major change, so let's look at one resulting from a change of just 3*C in the Yosemite National Park: alpine chipmunks. As the park heated up over the years, the chipmunks were reported to have moved to higher altitudes and decrease in number. Scientists analysed the species and they found what they termed 'genetic erosion' due to global warming. The chipmunks were losing their genetic diversity, which lowers their stability as a species, so they could go extinct.[8]

 

Us heating up the planet is causing genetic changes for other animals too. European Wasp Spiders have been found as far out as the Baltic Sea, far colder a place then they had been ever found on before, because it's now warm enough for them.[9] Grizzly bears and Polar bear hybrids are becoming increasingly common as melting icecaps force the species together, a feat that may resulting in the 'diluting' of the polar bear species, until they eventually go extinct.[10]

 

But what about resistance in animals instead of extinction? Looking generally, resistance to a vaccine for example can start with a mutation in the pathogen that changes its antigens, or a subset of pathogen that is able to hide from the immune system or are just different from other pathogens. These pathogens will not get killed by an antibiotic that is made to complimentary bind to a certain type of antigen, and so these pathogens will survive, multiply, and spread resistance until they are the normal pathogen to find and all the non resistant ones have been killed off. [11] Now specific to poisons, a similar process called mithridatism [12] exists. It involves exposing one to doses of poisons so their body can develop large antibodies that bind to poison molecules and stop it interacting with cells to actually be effective as a poison. [13] This process has inadvertently taken place in fish because of the Zoque tribes in Mexico who, every year, use grounds of poisonous plants to put into the river. The dead fish were seen as a sign of God but now, fish near poison site have genetically adapted to be immune to the poison Rotenone, because of humans. [14]

 

"All of these changes may seem small, even trivial, but when every species is affected in different ways these changes add up quickly and entire collapse is possible," [15]

 

And it's already happening. Kelp forests in Australia, Japan and the US have already crumbled under the pressure of global warming [12] and ice melting is releasing diseases that we are not immune to, so it's at the point where as a species, we have gone full circle. We have impacted nature, genes, and now we're having a detrimental impact on ourselves as well.

 

So, let's go back to your cabin that is decaying and ruined by disaster after disaster that hits it and you have no power to stop it. We wouldn't condone genetic manipulation of our children or sibling so we shouldn't allow it of animals, especially if only for our comfort. So, are we changing nature's genes?

 

Yes, yes, we are.

 

 

 

Reference Table:

Reference Number	Website used	Date accessed.	Author of article.
1	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852758/	18/06/18	Philip Hunter
2	https://web.stanford.edu/group/microdocs/bigfish.html	21/06/18	Not given.
3	http://www.pnas.org/content/106/Supplement_1/9987	1/7/18	Fred W Allendorf and Jeffrey J Hard
4	https://www.popsci.com/fish-shrinking-climate-change#page-2	1/7/18	Marlene Cimons
5	https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028102-400-unnatural-selection-spreading-sickness/	18/06/18	Micheal Le Page
6	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852758/v	18/06/18	Philip Hunter
7	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852758/	18/06/18	Philip Hunter
8	https://psmag.com/environment/genetics-global-warming-68146	21/06/18	Micheal White
9	https://psmag.com/environment/genetics-global-warming-68146	21/06/18	Micheal White
10	http://allthatsinteresting.com/grizzly-polar-bear-hybrid	21/06/18	Elisabeth Sherman
11	AQA A Level Biology Year 1 and AS (2nd edition) Textbook	1/7/18	Glenn Stoole and Susan Toole
12	https://io9.gizmodo.com/5972414/the-ironic-end-of-the-man-who-made-himself-immune-to-poison	1/7/18	Esther Inglis-Arkell
13	https://www.quora.com/Can-you-actually-build-up-an-immunity-to-poison-powder-like-in-the-Princess-Bride	1/7/18	Corvi Zeman
14	https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028101-800-unnatural-selection-how-humans-are-driving-evolution/	18/06/18	Micheal Le Page
15	http://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-affecting-all-life-on-earth-and-thats-not-good-news-for-humanity-66475	21/06/18	Brett Scheffers and James Watson.

 

 Originally Published: Nov 26 2019 with WILD Magazine. Click Here to read on WILD Magazine.

So...that there is the first article I think I properly wrote! It didn't win me 1st sadly, but I did come runner up and win a £20 voucher, and also got to put this article forward 18 months later when I decided to take a leap and join WILD Magazine when I saw them at my university Fresher's event so I guess it all ended pretty well. 

Now you've (hopefully stuck around to) made it to the end of that, my first article, I ask you, as I keep posting archives of my work, would you like them in order, or just as the story I seem to tell to bookend each article comes to mind?

From your neighbourhood Mischief Weaver: Ani. :)