Question: Hi.. so I have a question about mutations. Do you think that mutants are the next stage in evolution? What I mean is do you think it's possible for humans to evolve into mutants, depending on your definition of "mutants" anyway?

Elliot Jokl answered on 16 Jun 2016:

Thanks for the question!

The short answer is, we are all mutants already! Our great-great-great(skip a few)-great grandparents were ape-like, and we have changed a lot since then. Mutations are one of the natural ways in which we have evolved over all these years. Mutations can be good – one example is the mutations in the genes that helped us to grow bigger brains and become more intelligent.

I think we will continue to evolve, but the interesting thing is that we will soon be capable of making our own changes to DNA, which could make evolution go a lot faster, and direct our evolution in a very specific way. But at the moment, the technology isn’t quite there and there are a lot of people who think it would be a bad idea to start playing around with human DNA in case there are some unpredictable side effects. I think there are some good things we could do with that kind of technology – we could probably repair a lot of genetic diseases – but it is very hard to predict what will happen. Do you have any ideas?