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The increase in the world's population has led to the emergence of unique mutations
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The emergence of previously unknown genetic abnormalities and an increase in the frequency of unique mutations is not necessarily the cause of an off-scale radiation background - it is enough to simply sharply increase the population size.
The more rapidly the population increases, the more mutations are detected in the gene pool of the Earth's population.
The reason why genetic diseases are increasingly common in today's society is not only due to the polluted environment teeming with mutagens. As scientists from the Cornell Institute (USA) report in the journal Science, previously unknown mutations have only begun to appear because there are more of us.
The frequency of a particular mutation can be predicted using population genetics technologies, which combine the tools of classical genetics with the provisions of the evolutionary concept. The main characteristics that are taken into account are the size of the population, its dynamics, the degree of mutagenesis, and the type of mutation of interest to us. This makes it possible to predict the future of a genetic anomaly - whether a given mutation will become established in the population or disappear, and how quickly this will happen. However, as the authors of the note say, conventional mathematical models are in no way adapted to the accelerated increase in the number of a species.
This is what happened to the population of the Earth: over the past 10,000 years, the number of people has jumped from several million to 7 billion, with the greatest acceleration occurring over the past 2,000 years, or over the past 100 generations. Of course, even within the last period of time, this growth was random; for some time, the number of people grew consistently, until cumulative progress made human existence more comfortable and safe. To estimate the genetic dynamics of a population, scientists usually model its growth from some initial number of individuals. In this case, it was found that it is preferable to estimate the genetic dynamics in human populations in a sample of 10 thousand individuals - versus several dozen, which were used in earlier models. Previous models, based on linear rather than exponential population growth, gave a 500% error in predicting mutation rates. It should be emphasized that the type of growth is of primary importance here: gradual, linear population growth gives time for rare mutations to be removed from the gene pool.
The explosion of population has led to the fact that numerous rare gene types are much more common than expected. Thus, natural mutagenesis has a large field of activity, and in the future, the human race will face new mutations initiated from non-existence by a distortion in population dynamics. Perhaps the fantastic "X-Men" will become an ordinary reality - and will not come out of secret laboratories, but will be formed by natural evolutionary-genetic means.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to note that today almost any of us is, to some extent, a mutant. However, first of all, the results obtained will certainly make it possible to reassess the seriousness of genetic diseases, from the simplest to the most complex ones, such as autism, which can develop due to dozens and hundreds of all kinds of mutations.