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Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years.

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Affiliations

  • 1. Palaeogenetics Group, Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution (iomE), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany.
      Authors
    • Burger J 1
    • Blöcher J 1
    • Sell C 1
    • Diekmann Y 1
    • Winkelbach L 1
    • Scheu A 1
    (6 authors)
  • 2. Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
      Authors
    • Link V 2
    • Pochon Z 2
    • Hofmanová Z 2
    • Reyna-Blanco CS 2
    • Wegmann D 2
    (5 authors)
  • 3. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts, Hamburg University, 20354 Hamburg, Germany.
      Authors
    • Schulz A 3
    (1 author)
  • 4. Laboratory of Bioarchaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
      Authors
    • Žegarac A 4
    (1 author)
  • 5. Department of Natural History, NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7012 Trondheim, Norway.
      Authors
    • Bieker V 5
    (1 author)
    • Show all (16)

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Current Biology : CB, 03 Sep 2020, 30(21):4307-4315.e13
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033 PMID: 32888485 

A comment on this article appears in "Reevaluating the Evolution of Lactase Persistence." Am J Med Genet A. 2020 Dec;182(12):2814-2815. A comment on this article appears in "Human Genetics: Lactase Persistence in a Battlefield." Curr Biol. 2020 Nov 2;30(21):R1311-R1313.

Abstract 

Lactase persistence (LP), the continued expression of lactase into adulthood, is the most strongly selected single gene trait over the last 10,000 years in multiple human populations. It has been posited that the primary allele causing LP among Eurasians, rs4988235-A [1], only rose to appreciable frequencies during the Bronze and Iron Ages [2, 3], long after humans started consuming milk from domesticated animals. This rapid rise has been attributed to an influx of people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that began around 5,000 years ago [4, 5]. We investigate the spatiotemporal spread of LP through an analysis of 14 warriors from the Tollense Bronze Age battlefield in northern Germany (∼3,200 before present, BP), the oldest large-scale conflict site north of the Alps. Genetic data indicate that these individuals represent a single unstructured Central/Northern European population. We complemented these data with genotypes of 18 individuals from the Bronze Age site Mokrin in Serbia (∼4,100 to ∼3,700 BP) and 37 individuals from Eastern Europe and the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region, predating both Bronze Age sites (∼5,980 to ∼3,980 BP). We infer low LP in all three regions, i.e., in northern Germany and South-eastern and Eastern Europe, suggesting that the surge of rs4988235 in Central and Northern Europe was unlikely caused by Steppe expansions. We estimate a selection coefficient of 0.06 and conclude that the selection was ongoing in various parts of Europe over the last 3,000 years.

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Read article at publisher's site: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033

Read article for free, from open access legal sources, via Unpaywall: http://www.cell.com/article/S0960982220311878/pdfUnpaywall

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Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

    Swiss National Science Foundation