Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Diabetic risk from Neanderthal genes?

BBC LINK


this study is in Latin Americans and Mexicans: What is not answered is the ethnicity of those studies. Are they mainly upper class (with mainly Spanish blood) or lower class (metziso, mulatto, or Indian)?

Diabetes is very common in American Indian tribes: especially the Pima and the Objibwe (I worked with the latter).

And if so, how did this migrate to America? what is the percentage of Neanderthal genes in American Indians?

They discovered that the SLC16A11 sequence associated with risk of type 2 diabetes is found in a newly sequenced Neanderthal genome from Denisova Cave in Siberia.
Analyses indicate that the higher risk version of SLC16A11 was introduced into modern humans through interbreeding between early modern humans and Neanderthals.
It is not unusual to find Neanderthal genes. About 2% of the genomes of present-day non-Africans were inherited from this distinctive human group, which lived across Europe and western Asia from about 400,000-300,000 years ago until 30,000 years ago.

One thing about this "gene": it is a tendency to put on weight and develop metabolic syndrome if there is a lot of food...which means that during times of famine you are more likely to live.

bookmarked for later reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment