Neandertalare dna covid
Neanderthal genes may influence COVID-19 severity
The researchers first used computational analyses to understand how the genetic variants in the region overlapped with data on human immune cell function. Alakananda Dasgupta. A Neanderthal woman re-created and built by Dutch artists Andrie and Alfons Kennis, based on fossil anatomy and a study of DNA for the color of the skin and eyes. Capellini speculates that the variants could have been beneficial in the past, and therefore, selective pressures cemented their presence in the human genome.
They found having this variant meant there. How these Neanderthal genes became prominent in the human genome remains to be uncovered. Register for free to listen to this article. In , O ne of the biggest lingering questions surrounding COVID is why some people with the disease get sicker than others. They thus pared down the genetic variants in the region first to 20 variants that impacted gene expression, and then to four that showed activity differences between the introgressed and nonintrogressed versions.
Ultimately, they homed in on three variants that regulate two key chemokine receptor genes that play a role in mediating the cytokine storm that is often involved in the pathogenesis of severe COVID MPRA is a sophisticated functional genomics tool that allows scientists to test the potential impacts on gene regulatory function of thousands of genetic variants at a time.
The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals
Reilly concurs that the data would suggest that these alleles conferred some benefit to Neanderthals and ancient humans. View full profile. Credit: Joe McNally/Hulton. Now, Terence Capellini , a Harvard University human evolutionary biologist, and colleagues have systematically evaluated the more than genetic variants in the region. These chemokine receptor genes, such as CCR1 , CCR2 , CCR3 , CCR5 , and CCR9 , are all located in close proximity to the variants on chromosome 3 that are associated with disease severity and are, thus, in turn, likely to confer risk for severe COVID—though they have not been among the genes most strongly associated with severe disease in previous studies.
The genetic basis of any complex disease is difficult to understand at the molecular level, Reilly says, as doing so involves pinpointing the small number of disease-associated genetic changes out of what is a massive genome. In the research, the scientists found a Neanderthal gene variant on chromosome 3 that significantly increased the risk for severe COVID symptoms. This allowed them to screen all variants en masse in an immune cell line, which, in turn, enabled them to pinpoint the precise variants that altered the expression of key genes involved in mediating the immune response in COVID For those variants that did modulate gene expression, the researchers ascertained which of the two versions of the variant—the Neanderthal or introgressed allele, or the modern human one—did so.
Learn about our editorial policies. She is a medical doctor and a pathologist by training. Listen with Speechify. Specifically, they found on further experimentation that three of the four introgressed alleles significantly altered the expression of CCR1 and CCR5 , genes that code for key receptors involved in immune signaling between cells in the presence of SARS-CoV The genomic region on chromosome 3 that is linked to severe COVID houses a gene cluster encoding receptors for chemokines—proteins that attract immune cells to an infection.
Indeed, a genome-wide association study and a COVID Host Genetics Initiative dataset specifically point to a 50 kilobase-sized genomic segment on chromosome 3 as a major genetic risk factor for severe COVID—a segment that, back in , paleogenomicist Svante Pääbo and his collaborator Hugo Zeberg showed was inherited from Neanderthals some 50, to 70, years ago. However, the genetic variants on this segment—all strongly linked to each other—are legion, so the precise ones that drive its association with severe COVID have remained elusive.