2023-12-16 09:14:13
by Cristina Marrone
According to a new study, some humans may have inherited genetic variants capable of influencing today’s circadian clock from their extinct ancestors.
Do you get up easily early in the morning? You may have inherited the genes of Neanderthals, who had morning habits. A study published in Genome Biology and Evolution found that Neanderthal DNA remained in some modern humans and could determine whether a person was naturally an early riser.
Although the human biological clock is a complex feature shaped by social and cultural norms as well as, of course, genetics, Neanderthals, who evolved in colder areas in Europe and Asia where they lived for hundreds of thousands of years, may have adapted better at seasonal variations in daylight than Homo sapiens, who evolved at latitudes closer to the equator in Africa, where there is less variation in daylight hours.
It is possible that adaptation to changes in the amount of daylight was passed on to early Homo sapiens as they moved northward from Africa, where they met and interbred and sometimes mated with Neanderthals, who went extinct about 40,000 years ago. stated John Capra, geneticist and epidemiologist at the University of California, in the United States, among the authors of the work. While most of the genes that modern humans acquired through ancient interbreeding were eliminated by the evolutionary process, a small portion remained and in particular these genes would have helped the first modern humans adapt to new environments when they left Africa and Eurasia. Those genes of the Neanderthals who lived in the coldest areas of the world served to regulate our biological clock, Capra’s thesis.
About 70 thousand years ago, groups of Homo Sapiens migrated from Africa to Eurasia, up to Siberia and Great Britain, where Neanderthals had already adapted to colder climates, since they had occupied the territories hundreds of thousands of years before . Thanks to interbreeding between the groups, humans living today carry up to 4% of Neanderthal DNA, including genes related to skin pigmentation, hair, fat and the immune system (since Neanderthal DNA would have had role in influencing the course of the Covid-19 epidemic)
The study compared the DNA of living humans with genetic material recovered from Neanderthal fossils, finding that Neanderthals carried some of the same genetic variants linked to the body clock as morning people. To study the circadian rhythms of Neanderthals, Dr. Capra and his colleagues examined 246 genes that help control the biological clock. They compared the versions of the genes of extinct hominins with those of modern humans and discovered over a thousand mutations that were unique only to living humans or Neanderthals. With the analysis of data from the British biobank which contains the genomes of half a million volunteers. It was observed that almost all the variants of the ancient biological clock intercepted in volunteers increased the probability that the latter were early risers. The study is only a first step and will be necessary in comparison with other bio banks.
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December 16, 2023 (changed December 16, 2023 | 07:50)
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