If you’ve ever had trouble reducing your carb intake, an ancient gene may be to blame.
Our predilection for i carbohydratesaccording to recent research from the University at Buffalo in collaboration with the Jackson Laboratorycould have deep evolutionary roots, dating back even more than 800,000 years ago.
It has long been known that humans carry multiple copies of a gene that allows us to begin breaking down complex starch carbohydrates in the mouth, providing the first step in metabolizing carbohydrates. starchy foods like bread and pasta. However, it is notoriously difficult for researchers to determine how and when the number of these genes expanded.
Now, a new one study conducted by UB and the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) reveals how the duplication of this gene – known as salivary amylase gene (AMY1) – may not only have helped shape human adaptation to starchy foods, but may have occurred as far back as more than 800,000 years ago, long before the advent of agriculture.
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The study
This study identified in the gene AMY1 the one responsible for the digestive efficiency of carbohydrates: it codes for salivary amylase, the enzyme that begins to break down starches already in the mouth. People with more copies of the AMY1 gene can digest starches more easily and therefore absorb more energy from starchy foods, a characteristic that may have given human ancestors a significant evolutionary advantage.
This preference for carbohydrates probably began to take root with i pre-agricultural hunter-gathererswhich already possessed a high number of copies of AMY1 per cell, facilitating adaptation to a starch-rich diet well before the advent of agriculture.
In Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans, this ability represented an advantage for survival and reproduction, as individuals who digested starch better were more likely to reproduce and pass on these genetic variants.
The idea is that the more amylase genes you have, the more amylase you can produce and the more starch you can digest effectively.
Amylase, the researchers explain, is an enzyme that not only breaks down starch into glucosebut also gives flavor to the bread.
Gokcumen and his colleagues used optical genome mapping and long-read sequencing, a crucial methodological breakthrough to map the AMY1 gene region in stunning detail.
Traditional short-read sequencing methods struggle to accurately distinguish gene copies in this region due to their nearly identical sequence. However, long-read sequencing allowed Gokcumen and Lee to overcome this challenge in today’s humans, providing a clearer picture of how AMY1 duplications evolved.
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