Why 50% Indians will be happy to have some Neanderthal DNA. Hint: It has to do with Covid

NEGI RK Sunday, February 21, 2021

Researchers in Germany, Japan find that nearly half the Indian population has inherited a DNA sequence from Neanderthals that is believed to reduce risk of severe disease due to Covid.

New Delhi: An estimated 50 per cent of the Indian population is less susceptible to severe Covid-19, and it’s probably because Neanderthals and modern humans got naughty with each other tens of thousands of years ago. Or so claims a group of researchers from Japan and Germany. 

According to researchers behind a study published in PNAS last week, nearly half the Indian population has inherited a 75,000-character-long DNA sequence from Neanderthals that is believed to reduce the risk of severe disease due to Covid-19.

Conducted by researchers from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, the study sought to examine a gene variant that was linked to a 22 per cent reduced risk of severe Covid-19 and ICU admissions in another study conducted in December. It found the variant identical to one found in three different Neanderthal specimens.

This is not the first piece of research to find a link between Neanderthals, a species of ancient humans that became extinct 40,000 years ago, and Covid susceptibility in modern human beings.

In July last year, a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology found that a piece of the human genome that increases the risk of severe illness from Covid-19 was inherited from Neanderthals over 60,000 years ago. An estimated 30 per cent of South Asians are believed to carry this gene sequence.

“It’s quite amazing that despite Neanderthals becoming extinct around 40,000 years ago, their immune system still influences us in both positive and negative ways today,” Svante Pääbo of OIST said in a statement released with the study.

Hugo Zeberg, one of the authors of the study, told ThePrint that nearly 50 per cent of Indians carry this DNA sequence. The frequency of this gene variant is 49.5 per cent in Gujaratis, and 48 per cent in the Telugu population, COVID.n addition, the mortality is very high among Gujaratis and Marathis while both mortality & infection rates have been low among Telugu & Tamil populations. both the studies do not prove anything.