Genetic Study Offers Clues to Survival in the Peruvian Andes

BUFFALO, NEW YORK—A new study suggests that Indigenous Andeans in Peru have more copies of the gene for amylase, a saliva-based digestive enzyme, than any other population in the world, according to a Live Science report. Amylase breaks down complex starches into simple sugars, making starches easier to digest. Omer Gokcumen of the University of Buffalo and his colleagues examined data from more than 3,700 people to track the average number of salivary amylase genes in 85 populations from around the world. The team members determined that Andeans in Peru and the Akimel O’odham people of southern Arizona and northern Mexico had the highest average numbers of the genes. The researchers focused on the Peruvians because there were too few Akimel O’odham individuals in the sample to test for signs of natural selection in the population. Gokcumen said that being able to produce more amylase could have been a great advantage to ancient Peruvians when it came to consuming potatoes, which were domesticated in the Andes some 10,000 years ago. People who did not have the added copies of salivary amylase genes may not have had successful pregnancies, or people who had inherited the additional copies of the gene may have had more children, Gokcumen said. “It’s actually a life-or-death kind of situation,” he explained. The functional advantage of having more salivary amylase copies is not yet completely understood by the scientists, but the genes may affect the microbiome, metabolism, and immune system. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Communications. To read more about Andean societies of the past, go to "Return to Serpent Mountain."