New Clues to How Neanderthal Genes Affect Your Health
If your arthritis is bad today or you’re slathering on aloe for an early autumn sunburn, Neanderthals may be partly to blame.
Scientists announced today the second complete, high-quality sequencing of a Neanderthal genome , made using the 52,000-year-old bones of a female found in the Vindija cave in Croatia.
Together with the genomes from another Neanderthal woman and a host of modern humans, a suite of analyses is yielding new clues about how DNA from Neanderthals contributed to our genetic makeup and might still be affecting us today.
For instance, one new study appearing in the journal Science suggests that Neanderthal genes contribute 1.8 to 2.6 percent of the total genetic makeup for people of Eurasian ancestry. That’s slightly up from a previous estimate of 1.5 to 2.1 percent. (Find out about the first solid DNA evidence that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred .)
The same paper also found that several areas of the new Neanderthal genome match segments in certain modern humans that are closely associated with various health concerns, including blood cholesterol levels, schizophrenia, eating disorders, and rheumatoid arthritis.
But don’t go blaming Neanderthals for all your medical woes, cautions study leader Kay Prüfer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. After all, hundreds if not thousands of factors influence gene expression.
“These are just associations, so that doesn’t mean if you have a particular variant of a gene, you either will or won’t have a disease. It means sometimes you might ,” Prüfer says.
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What’s more, some of the Neanderthal contributions are potentially helpful.
“When we looked, there was one variant that was more certain, for LDL cholesterol, and the gene the Vindija individual carried is protective,” Prüfer says. Low-density lipoprotein, commonly called “bad” cholesterol, is associated with fatty buildups in arteries, so genetic protections would help guard against issues such as heart disease.
“A common misconception is the things that come from Neanderthals are generally bad,” Prüfer says, “but that’s not entirely true.”
Good read, thanks
My son, who is studying archaeology in college, has come home for the weekend, telling me all about the latest "finds" about the Neanderthal gene sequencing. Neanderthals have been reclassified as a subspecies of the homo sapiens genome. We, as modern man, are called homo sapiens sapiens, while the Neanderthals are called homo sapiens neanderthalis.
I find this to be utterly fascinating!
Also: Dogs have been domesticated for 15,000 to 18,000 years, while cats have been domesticated for 9-10,000 years. Here's one for Kavika, my dear friend-- the Ojibwe have an different mitochondrial DNA chain that anyone here in the US. The only other traces of this mitochondrial DNA are found in isolated pockets in Central Europe. All the others come from Asia. YAY, Kavika! You knew this already, but now they're agreeing and teaching it!
I once dated a fellow that looked like a Neanderthalis Abnormalis... (play on words...)
Hope everyone has a great day!