Antonio Rosas

A team from China has analysed the genetic data of more than 450,000 people and identified a variant in a gene that contributed to increased height and basal metabolic rate in modern humans, especially when meat consumption increases. In addition to providing insight into evolutionary processes, the finding ‘also has important implications for understanding susceptibility and resistance to contemporary metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome,’ according to the authors. The results are published in the journal Cell Genomics.

A team of researchers has analyzed more than 300 human genomes from the last 50,000 years and has concluded that most of the gene flow we received from Neanderthals is attributable to a single period, which probably occurred between 50,500 and 43,500 years ago. In addition, Neanderthal inheritance underwent rapid natural selection in subsequent generations, especially on the X chromosome, according to a study published in Science.

The Karolinska Institute has awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology to Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo, a specialist in evolutionary genetics, for his discoveries on the genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution.