CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—Scientists have determined that a variation of a gene that increases the risk of a person developing type 2 diabetes by 25 percent was likely introduced into human populations by Neanderthals more than 60,000 years ago. Half of people with a recent Native American lineage, including Latin Americans, have the gene, SLC16A11, as do 20 percent of East Asians. The newly seqeuenced, high quality Neanderthal genome, taken from a female toe found in Siberia’s Denisova Cave, also included the variant, and researchers say that analysis suggests that Neanderthals introduced it into the human genome when they intermixed with modern humans, after the latter left Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. According to the findings from the completed Neanderthal genome, roughly two percent of the genomes of today’s non-African humans are comprised of Neanderthal DNA.
Neanderthals Passed Along Diabetes Risk Gene
News December 27, 2013
Recommended Articles
Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade January/February 2021
Neanderthal Genome
Vindija Cave, Croatia, 2010
Top 10 Discoveries of 2020 January/February 2021
Largest Viking DNA Study
Northern Europe and Greenland
Digs & Discoveries March/April 2023
Closely Knit
-
Features November/December 2013
Life on the Inside
Open for only six weeks toward the end of the Civil War, Camp Lawton preserves a record of wartime prison life
(Virginia Historical Society, Mss5.1.Sn237.1v.6p.139) -
Features November/December 2013
Vengeance on the Vikings
Mass burials in England attest to a turbulent time, and perhaps a notorious medieval massacre
(Courtesy Thames Valley Archaeological Services) -
Letter from Bangladesh November/December 2013
A Family’s Passion
(Courtesy Reema Islam) -
Artifacts November/December 2013
Moche Ceremonial Shield
(Courtesy Lisa Trever, University of California, Berkeley)