Are our genes still shaped by natural selection?

Yes our genes are still shaped by natural selection. A group of researchers have detected almost 700 regions of the human genome where the genes seem to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution in the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.
These genes, some responsable for the senses of taste and smell, bone structure , skin color, brain function and digestion show this evolutionary change.

Jonathan Pritchard, a population genecisist at the University of Chicago created a scan of the human genome. According to him the scan of the human genome is different from the previous two, through a statistical test that he created,he identified certain genes that started to spread through populations in recent millenia and have not yet become universal, as many advantageous genes usually do. The selected genes that he has detected fall into a handfull of functional categories, as might be expected if people were adapting to specific changes in their environment. Some are genes involved in digesting particular foods like the lactose-digesting enzyme gene common in most Europeans. Some are genes that mediate taste and smell as well as detoxify plant poisons, perhaps signaling a shift in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants and animals.

Dr Pritchard's team found that several genes associated with embryonic development of the bones had been under selection in East Asians and Europeans , and these could be another sign of the forager- to farmer transition. The relative handfull of selected genes that Dr Pritchard's study has pinpointed may be generally similar. Each gene has astory of some pressure that we as human beings adapted to.