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Europeans
have three times more Neanderthal genes for lipid catabolism than Asians or
Africans
Europeans
have three times more Neanderthal genes for lipid catabolism than Asians or
Africans
Date:
April 2,
2014
Source:
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Summary:
Contemporary Europeans have as many as three times
more Neanderthal variants in genes involved in lipid catabolism than Asians and
Africans. Although Neanderthals are extinct, fragments of their genomes persist
in modern humans. These shared regions are unevenly distributed across the
genome and some regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants.
.....................
Contemporary
Europeans have as many as three times more Neanderthal variants in genes
involved in lipid catabolism than Asians and Africans.
Although
Neanderthals are extinct, fragments of their genomes persist in modern humans.
These shared regions are unevenly distributed across the genome and some
regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants. An international
team of researchers led by Philipp Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the CAS-MPG Partner
Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai, China, show that DNA sequences
shared between modern humans and Neanderthals are specifically enriched in
genes involved in the metabolic breakdown of lipids. This sharing of genes is
seen mainly in contemporary humans of European descent and may have given a
selective advantage to the individuals with the Neanderthal variants.
The
researchers analyzed the distribution of Neanderthal variants in the genomes of
eleven contemporary human populations of African, Asian and European descent.
They found that genes involved in the lipid synthesis contained a particularly
high number of Neanderthal variants in contemporary humans of European origin,
but not in Asians and Africans.
"These
sequences show signs of recent positive selection," says Philipp
Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig, Germany, and the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology
in Shanghai, China. "This may indicate that they give modern humans
carrying the Neanderthal genotype a selective advantage."
Analyzing
the influence of Neanderthal variants on lipid processing in modern humans, the
researchers further found recent evolutionary changes in lipid concentration
and expression of metabolic enzymes in brains of humans of European origin.
"We
don't know what these lipid concentration changes do to the brain, but the fact
that Neanderthal variants might have changed our brain composition has
interesting implications," says Philipp Khaitovich. Further work is
needed, however, in order to fully assess the potential functional effects of
these changes.
Story
Source:
The above
story is based on materials
provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal
Reference:
- Ekaterina E. Khrameeva, Katarzyna Bozek, Liu He, Zheng Yan, Xi Jiang, Yuning Wei, Kun Tang, Mikhail S. Gelfand, Kay Prufer, Janet Kelso, Svante Paabo, Patrick Giavalisco, Michael Lachmann, Philipp Khaitovich. Neanderthal ancestry drives evolution of lipid catabolism in contemporary Europeans. Nature Communications, 2014; 5 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4584
Cite This
Page:
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
"Europeans have three times more Neanderthal genes for lipid catabolism than
Asians or Africans." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 April 2014.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402100056.htm>.