Evolution of the Pituitary Gland

            I predict that the humans in the future will have a more active pituitary gland. Water is an important essential for life; unfortunately humans in the first world countries are extremely wasteful with this natural resource. Freshwater is becoming polluted with chemicals because people decided that it was a safe way to dispose chemicals. Also, global warming is slowly bringing up the global temperature resulting in droughts. With less than 1% of the water available for human use, it is expected that in the future, we will run out of available water for the humans. Having a more active pituitary gland means it releases more anti- diuretic hormone (ADH). ADH is important and relates to water because the hormone allows the kidney to reabsorb more water before the waste (urine) is released. This allows more water to go back in the body saving water and a more concentrated urine.

          This excessive release of the ADH hormone would be caused by the death in the AVPR2 gene. This gene is responsible for producing the protein, vasopressin V2 repressor. This gene allows the kidney to communicate back and forth with the pituitary gland telling it when to stop releasing the ADH hormone for water reabsorption in the kidneys. With the deletion of this gene, the pituitary gland will constantly release ADH to reabsorb water.  This will be beneficial when humans have very little water and need to learn to conserve water. This mutation  will start in the third world countries where drinkable water is already scarce and will soon effect the first world countries when drinkable water  is taken away due to pollution and droughts. The mutations allow humans to survive the drought while the others die from dehydration. Those who survive will pass on the deletion and pass on the genes to future generations.