A useful inheritance

Women are helped to give birth by a "gift" from Neanderthals – study

Natalia Panasenko, Rossiyskaya Gazeta

About 2% of Europeans inherited Neanderthal genes. And these genes perform important functions: they help strengthen the immune system, help control the percentage of body fat, and, according to one hypothesis, thanks to these genes, Europeans have light skin and hair. Even our daily rhythm may depend on these archaic genes.

Another function of this genetic heritage has recently been discovered: the Neanderthals left the fertility gene (the ability to produce viable offspring) to women. This is stated in a new study by the Max Planck Society Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution (Zeberg et al., The Neandertal Progesterone Receptor).

A team of scientists led by Svante Paabo studied the data of the biobank, which contains information about more than 450,000 people. Genetic analysis showed that almost every third European woman inherited the progesterone receptor from Neanderthals. 29% of European women have one copy of the Neanderthal receptor, and 3% have two copies.

The progesterone receptor is important during pregnancy: it plays a key role in preparing the inner lining of the uterus for embryo implantation and its further development. The researchers tested three Neanderthal genomes to determine whether Ice Age humans had this genetic modification and whether it was one of the mutations inherited from Neanderthals. It turned out that there was: scientists found this mutation variant (V660L) in all three Neanderthal genomes and showed that it is transferred from the genome of Neanderthals to the genome of Homo Sapiens. Further analysis showed that these mutations were quite rare in our ancestors about 40,000 years ago, but then spread more and more over the millennia.

The first author of the article, Hugo Zeberg, claims that the number of women who inherited this gene is about ten times more than for most other Neanderthal gene variants.

But why is this Neanderthal gene mutation so common? To find out, Zeberg and colleagues studied what distinguished V660L carriers during pregnancy.

It turned out that women with the Neanderthal variant of the receptor have less bleeding in the early stages of pregnancy, they have fewer miscarriages. In addition, as a rule, more children are born in the families of carriers of these gene variants.

"The results show that the Neanderthal variant of the receptor has a beneficial effect on fertility,– says Zeberg. –The progesterone receptor is an example of how beneficial genetic variants that Homo Sapiens got as a result of mixing with Neanderthals can have an impact on modern humans."

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