Evidence that RNA Viruses Drove Adaptive Introgression between Neanderthals and Modern Humans.
Cell
; 175(2): 360-371.e13, 2018 10 04.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30290142
ABSTRACT
Neanderthals and modern humans interbred at least twice in the past 100,000 years. While there is evidence that most introgressed DNA segments from Neanderthals to modern humans were removed by purifying selection, less is known about the adaptive nature of introgressed sequences that were retained. We hypothesized that interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans led to (1) the exposure of each species to novel viruses and (2) the exchange of adaptive alleles that provided resistance against these viruses. Here, we find that long, frequent-and more likely adaptive-segments of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans are enriched for proteins that interact with viruses (VIPs). We found that VIPs that interact specifically with RNA viruses were more likely to belong to introgressed segments in modern Europeans. Our results show that retained segments of Neanderthal ancestry can be used to detect ancient epidemics.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
RNA Viruses
/
Neanderthals
/
Hybridization, Genetic
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Cell
Year:
2018
Type:
Article