Diabetes risk increased by Neanderthal gene

Diabetes risk increased by Neanderthal genet

29/12/2013

Diabetes is common in Central America. Researchers have now discovered that genes that promote the disease can be traced back to the Neanderthals.

Genetic tested by people from Central America
Researchers from several universities working on the so-called Sigma project presented a new study last week, investigating the genetic makeup of people from Mexico and Latin America. With Sigma, the genetic causes of various diseases in Americans are to be more accurately decrypted. Like the scientists in the journal „Nature“ Among those Central Americans, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is twice as high as that of white Americans. „Gene studies in different populations can reveal gene variants that increase the risk of certain diseases in some groups“, said the team around Teresa Tusié Luna from the National University of Mexico.

Distribution pattern of the gene variant unusual
They found a cause for the accumulation of diabetes in Mexico and Latin America with the gene variant SLC16A11. As the researchers write, the distribution pattern of SLC16A11 is unusual, because in fact, gene variants in all populations of the different continents are similarly common. SLC16A11 is hardly to be found in about 20 percent of East Asians and Africans. In Europeans, the variant only very rarely appear. The Sigma researchers turned to the specialists around the paleoanthropologist Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig to better understand this pattern.

Found in the genome of Neanderthals
The Leipzig researchers then searched their databases for SLC16A11 and found it in the genome of Neanderthals. From this one can conclude that modern humans probably did not receive this gene variant until the Neanderthals mingled with Homo sapiens, which later immigrated to Europe. On the American continent, which was later populated, then brought a group of modern people, the diabetes gene to Central America, where it is passed on today from generation to generation. Since the original population of white Americans SLC16A11 was not in their genetic material, it was, unlike the first settlers, hardly common in them. After Africa, the Neanderthal genes apparently did not find their way anymore.

Development of new drugs possible
Co-author of the study, Jose Florez, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, said „BBC News“, that the new results could make the development of new drugs possible. So far, in genetic studies, mostly samples of people of European or Asian descent have been studied. (Ad)