Thanks to a scientific study that was conducted then published in the Journal Science Advances in October 2023, Scientists discovered how Neanderthal genes are in larger amounts in some populations than others and through this study, answers were provided for years of questions.
Research showed that Neanderthal genes are more abundant in the East Asian population than anywhere in Europe; however, it becomes a mystery to the researchers because they discovered something out of the ordinary. The Neanderthal genes were richer in an area where scientists never found remains of them.
“So what’s puzzling is that an area where we’ve never found any Neanderthal remains, there’s more Neanderthal DNA,” stated Mathlas Currat, a senior lecturer of genetics and evolution at the University of Geneva and coauthor of the study. According to CNN World, past studies show that Neanderthal remains were found across Europe and Middle East but not towards Central Asia.
By analyzing the inherited Neanderthal DNA distribution to humans in the past 4,000 years, Currat and his colleagues brainstormed for an explanation for this mystery.
According to CNN World, on average, Neanderthal DNA is 2% of the Eurasian population while it is 4% in the East Asian population.
“We are beginning to have enough data to describe more and more precisely the percentage of DNA of Neanderthal origin in the genome of Sapiens at certain periods of prehistory,” Currat explained to CNN World.
How is this gene exactly beneficial for the human body? A study published in December 2020 suggests that it isn’t that amazing to have Neanderthal DNA.
According to the research, Scientists found a correlation between the gene, human habits, and fertility. “Neanderthal DNA may affect skin tone and hair color, height, sleeping patterns, mood and even addiction in present-day Europeans”
“We’ve found associations with sensitive neuropsychiatric diseases and addiction (and Neanderthal gene variants), which are primed for people to emotionally connect with when they’re looking for an explanation for why they or their loved one is struggling,” Tony Capra, geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute also tells CNN Health.
With a pandemic that affected the entire world back in 2020, Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, shifted his attention to the latest medical problem of that time: The coronavirus pandemic.
The National History Museum describes that unlike human skulls that were more globular, Neanderthal skulls were long and low and one of their distinctive features are their very big and wide noses, large front teeth, and little to no chin. These physical features suited the cold environments that Neanderthals lived in back in the day.
Pääbo and his team of scientists studies the relationship between the Neanderthal DNA and the virus and according to an article published by CNN Health, “The Neanderthal DNA strand is found on chromosome 3; a team of researchers in Europe has linked certain variations in this sequence with the risk of being more severely ill when infected by Covid-19.”
It seems like carrying a Neanderthal DNA is doing more bad than good but, Neanderthals should not be blamed for this. After all, disadvantages are not all that the gene brings to the table.
Pääbo published a study at the beginning of 2020 that showed “…women who carry the a gene variant inherited from Neanderthals were less likely to experience miscarriage or bleed while pregnant.”
