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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 25 2016, @07:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the Nonook-of-the-North dept.

In the Arctic, the Inuits have adapted to severe cold and a predominantly seafood diet. After the first population genomic analysis of the Greenland Inuits, a region in the genome containing two genes has now been scrutinized by scientists: TBX15 and WARS2. This region is thought to be central to cold adaptation by generating heat from a specific type of body fat, and was earlier found to be a candidate for adaptation in the Inuits.

Now, a team of scientists led by Fernando Racimo, Rasmus Nielsen et al. have followed up on the first natural selection study in Inuits to trace back the origins of these adaptations.

To perform the study, they used the genomic data from nearly 200 Greenlandic Inuits and compared this to the 1000 Genomes Project and ancient hominid DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans. The results, published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, provide convincing evidence that the Inuit variant of the TBX15/WARS2 region first came into modern humans from an archaic hominid population, likely related to the Denisovans.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by zafiro17 on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:45PM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:45PM (#445796) Homepage

    The Denisovans are a hugely interesting people, but I've looked around and haven't found any good books about them worth recommending or reading. I did find however tons of 10-year old books on Amazon.com that purport to tell the story about early hominids. Imagine how much has changed in our understanding of that period that would make a ten year old book almost useless.

    Interesting though is that the Denisovans also passed on a gene that appears to allow Tibetans to tolerate high altitudes with no problem, as well. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/tibetans-inherited-high-altitude-gene-ancient-human [sciencemag.org]

    These people were well adapted to living on the fringe. I'd love to know more about them, but these are early days.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
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