# Race is non-existent **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-non-existent/643100 "2012-12-05T18:28:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 46
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-non-existent/643100/46 "2012-12-09T20:59:26Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > That Eurasion group had a mitochondrial eve somewhere around 35-75K years ago, may have mated with Neanderthals, and acquired a set of genes (including, for example, broad penetrance of the haplotype D version of MCPH1) which are not present in the Africa group. Would you consider taking a college-level molecular biology class to further your knowledge in this subject? I think you’ll find the subject enlightening. Here’s a bit of foreshadowing. Read carefully, I get paid to teach this stuff, there’ll be a test at the end: Human haplogroups consist of mostly silent mutations which means there’s a change in a nucleotide but due to the degeneracy (e.g. or, in layman’s terms: redundancy) of the genetic code, there’s no change in the resultant protein (the physical expression of the gene, or the phenotype). Now, using your example, this means while Europeans and Blacks have a change in nucleotide sequence, there is no change in the final protein. I’ll repeat: there’s no change in the final protein. There are evolutionary examples in which groups carry real, phenotypic changes that are passed down (e.g. Southern Europeans & CCR5 and Sub-saharan Africans & Hemoglobin S) but these were due to infection-induced bottlenecks, and these should be considered the exceptions not the rule. What you and the peanut gallery fail to see (because your knowledge of genes does not extend past year 1999) is that a phenotype does not emerge due to a genes alone; indeed, traits are an intricate interplay between genes and epigenetics (environment). If you need any proof of this unassailable fact, just look [here](http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Cloned_Cat.html) where the fur coloration of a cat is different from its clone. Further, why do you think that nearly all suicide victims show epigenetic silencing of BDNF? It’s because the genes are responsive to the environment. The OP is correct. Race does not exist in biology nor in reality. What we perceive as differences in characteristics (e.g. curly hair, narrow noses, full lips, brown skin, etc) are referred to as a specific [cline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cline_(biology)) not a race. - Honesty --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-non-existent/643100)._