Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

Studying a British family with a speech disorder spanning three generations—difficulty with grammar and with coordinating the complex movements of mouth, face, and throat necessary for normal speech—researchers homed in on a genetic mishap, a change to a single letter in a gene called FOXP2 sitting on human chromosome 7.14 The instructional misprint is shared by the afflicted family members and has thus been strongly implicated in the disruption of both language and speech. Early press coverage of the discovery dubbed FOXP2 the “grammar gene” or the “language gene,” headline-grabbing descriptions that irked informed researchers, but oversimplified hyperbole aside, the FOXP2 gene does appear to be one essential component for normal speech and language. Intriguingly, close variations of the FOXP2 gene have been identified in many species, from chimps to birds to fish, allowing researchers to trace how the gene has changed over evolutionary history. For chimps, the protein encoded by their FOXP2 gene differs from ours by only two amino acids (out of more than seven hundred), while that of Neanderthals is identical to ours.