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Ancient gene aids Tibetans with high altitude

 
Tibetans such as this man can thank an extinct human relative for the gene that helps them adapt to high altitude, according to a study.
Tibetans such as this man can thank an extinct human relative for the gene that helps them adapt to high altitude, according to a study.
Published July 3, 2014

NEW YORK — Tibetans living on the "roof of the world" can thank an extinct human relative for providing a gene that helps them adapt to the high altitude, a study suggests.

Past research has concluded that a particular gene helps people live in the thin air of the Tibetan plateau. Now scientists report that the Tibetan version of that gene is found in DNA from Denisovans, a poorly understood human relative more closely related to Neanderthals than modern people.

Denisovans are known only from fossils in a Siberian cave that are dated to at least about 50,000 years ago. Some of their DNA has also been found in other modern populations, indicating they interbred with ancient members of today's human race long ago.

But the version of the high-altitude gene shared by Denisovans and Tibetans is found in virtually no other population today, researchers report in an article released Wednesday by the journal Nature.

That suggests Denisovans or close relatives of theirs introduced the gene variant into the modern human species, but that it remained rare until some people started moving into the Tibetan plateau, said study main author Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley.

At that point, it conferred a survival advantage and so spread through the Tibetan population, he said in an email. It's not clear whether the Denisovans were also adapted to high altitudes, he said.

The Tibetan plateau rises above 13,000 feet in elevation.

Todd Disotell, an anthropology professor at New York University who didn't participate in the study, called the new work "one of the coolest scientific results I have seen in a while. ... This is a slam-dunk case."