Autentic Distribution Takes Rights to New Genetics Doc

Autentic Distribution has acquired the worldwide rights to the new science documentary Human by Chance?—The Gene That Made Our Brain Grow.

The doc follows the researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden as they work to discover the origin of humanity’s dominance on earth, which is due to the rapid growth of our brains over two million years ago. Human by Chance?—The Gene That Made Our Brain Grow is produced by Hoferichter & Jacobs for the German pubcaster MDR.

Led by Dr. Wieland Huttner, the research team became the first in history to make embryonic brains of marmosets grow by using the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B. Not only do they discover the reason for our larger brains, but also that humans owe their cognitive abilities to a coincidence: a point mutation that occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago in one of our early ancestors, on this exact gene.

The results are supplemented by the insights of Primatologist Dr. Roman Wittig, evolutionary researcher Dr. Philipp Gunz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Professor of Comparative Developmental Psychology and neuroscientist Dr. Katja Liebal, and bestselling author and scientist Dr. Franca Parianen.