Neanderthals and modern man have mixed and exchanged genes several times over the millennia. Researchers have found that people who have inherited a genetic variant for a Neanderthal ion channel have a lower pain threshold. Credit: © Science Photo Library / Daynes, Elisabeth
People who inherited a special ion channel from Neanderthals experience more pain.
Since several high-quality Neanderthal genomes are available, researchers can identify the genetic changes that were present in many or all Neanderthals, investigate their physiological effects, and analyze their consequences when they occur in people today. By examining a gene that involves such changes, Hugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo, and their colleagues found that some people, especially from Central and South America, but also from Europe, have inherited a Neanderthal variant of a gene that encodes an ion channel that initiates the feeling. of pain.
Using data from a large UK population study, the authors show that people in the UK who carry the Neanderthal variant of the ion channel experience more pain. “The most important factor in how much pain people report is their age. But wearing the Neanderthal variant of the ion channel makes you experience more pain similar to if you were eight years older, “says lead author Hugo Zeberg, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Karolinska Institute.” The Neanderthal variant of the ion channel take three amino acid differences with the common, ‘modern’ variant, ”explains Zeberg. “While individual amino acid substitutions do not affect ion channel function, the full-length Neanderthal variant that carries three amino acid substitutions leads to increased pain sensitivity in people today.”
At the molecular level, the Neanderthal ion channel is more easily activated, which may explain why people who inherited it have a lower pain threshold. “It is difficult to say whether Neanderthals experienced more pain because pain is also modulated in both the spinal cord and brain,” says Pääbo. “But this work shows that their threshold for initiating pain impulses was lower than in most humans today.”
Reference: “A Neanderthal Sodium Channel Increases Pain Sensitivity in Modern Humans” by Hugo Zeberg, Michael Dannemann, Kristoffer Sahlholm, Kristin Tsuo, Tomislav Maricic, Victor Wiebe, Wulf Hevers, Hugh PC Robinson, Janet Kelso, and Svante Pääbo, July 23, 2020 Current biology.
DOI: 10.1016 / j.cub.2020.06.045
