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Potatoes Didn't Just Feed Ancient Indigenous Communities in the Andes—the Tasty Tubers Also Reshaped People's DNA
Key takeaways
- PIxabay Between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, Indigenous communities living high in the Andes Mountains began to domesticate the potato.
- Indigenous Andeans living in what is now Peru have extra copies of a gene called AMY1, which helps the body digest starch.
- “It is a wonderful case of culture shaping biology,” says study co-author Omer Gokcumen, an evolutionary and anthropological geneticist at the University at Buffalo, to Reuters’ Will Dunham.
PIxabay Between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, Indigenous communities living high in the Andes Mountains began to domesticate the potato. They ate so much of this versatile, highly nutritious tuber that their genes began to change—and those adaptations live on in their descendants today, scientists report in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
Indigenous Andeans living in what is now Peru have extra copies of a gene called AMY1, which helps the body digest starch. These individuals have the highest known numbers of AMY 1 of any population in the world. What’s more, the genetic changes appear to have emerged around the same time potatoes were first domesticated in the region.
“It is a wonderful case of culture shaping biology,” says study co-author Omer Gokcumen, an evolutionary and anthropological geneticist at the University at Buffalo, to Reuters’ Will Dunham.