Genetic mutation may have allowed early humans to migrate throughout Africa
A genetic mutation that occurred thousands of years ago might be the answer to how early humans were able to move from central Africa and across the continent in what has been called “the great expansion,” according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
By analyzing genetic sequence variation patterns in different populations around the world, three teams of scientists from Wake Forest Baptist, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, demonstrated that a critical genetic variant arose in a key gene cluster on chromosome 11, known as the fatty acid desaturase cluster or FADS, more than 85,000 years ago. This variation would have allowed early humans to convert plant-based polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to brain PUFAs necessary for increased brain size, complexity and function. The FADS cluster plays a critical role in determining how effectively medium-chain PUFAs found in plants are converted to the long-chain PUFAs found in the brain.
This research is published online today in PLOS One.
Archeological and genetic studies suggest that homo sapiens appeared approximately 180,000 years ago, but stayed in one location around bodies of water in central Africa for almost 100,000 years. Senior author Floyd H. “Ski” Chilton, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology and director of the Center for Botanical Lipids and Inflammatory Disease Prevention at Wake Forest Baptist, and others have hypothesized that this location was critical, in part, because early humans needed large amounts of the long-chain PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is found in shellfish and fish, to support complex brain function.
“This may have kept early humans tethered to the water in central Africa where there was a constant food source of DHA,” Chilton said. “There has been considerable debate on how early humans were able to obtain sufficient DHA necessary to maintain brain size and complexity. It’s amazing to think we may have uncovered the region of genetic variation that arose about the time that early humans moved out of this central region in what has been called the ‘great expansion.’”
Once this trait arose, the study shows that it was under intense selective pressure and thus rapidly spread throughout the population of the entire African continent. “The power of genetics continually impresses me, and I find it remarkable that we can make inferences about things that happened tens of thousands of years ago by studying patterns of genetic variation that exist in contemporary populations,” said Joshua M. Akey, Ph.D., lead scientist at the University of Washington.
