‘ Humans inherited viral defences’

Neanderthals’ genes gave us protection against viruses: Study

Boston, Oct. 5: Neanderthal genes likely gave modern humans protection against viruses that our ancestors encountered when they left Africa, according to a study.

The research, published in the journal Cell, shows that the genetic defences that Neanderthals passed to us were against RNA viruses, which encode their genes with RNA, a molecule that’s chemically similar to DNA.

Neanderthals mysteriously disappeared about 40,000 years ago, but before vanishing they interbred with another human species that was just beginning its global spread, said researchers from the Stanford University in the US. As a result of these ancient trysts, many modern Eur- opeans and Asians today harbour about two per cent of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, they said.

“Our research shows that a substantial number of frequently occurring Neanderthal DNA snippets were adaptive for a very cool reason,” said Dmitri Petrov, an evolutionary biologist at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences.

“Neanderthal genes likely gave us some protection against viruses that our ancestors encountered when they left Africa,” Petrov said. Our newly emigrated ancestors, by comparison, would have been much more vulnerable, researchers said. Our newly emigrated ancestors, by comparison, would have been much more vulnerable, researchers said.