Extinct humans primed Tibetans for the high life

• Autores: Catherine Brahic
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2976, 2014, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Tibetans are comfortable at high altitudes where the air is thin. Now it seems a gene variant that gives them an edge over other people did not evolve in modern humans. It comes from an extinct species of human called the Denisovans. Living on the roof of the world is hard. Studies have linked their altitude adaptation to several genes including EPAS1, part of the system that helps the body react to low levels of oxygen. Now Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have compared Tibetan genomes with populations from around the world. But they found the same gene variant in the genome of a Denisovan, an extinct species of human known only from a cave in the Altai mountains in east-central Asia.