IN NUMBERS: Over 14,000 fresh cases reported India reported 14,199 fresh coronavirus infections on Monday, taking the cumulative caseload to 11,005,850, according to a report in the Scroll. The country saw 83 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 156,385, according to central health ministry data. The total recoveries have surged to 10,699,410, while the national recovery rate is at 97.22 per cent. The active caseload is at 150,055, which makes up 1.36 per cent of the total caseload. About 11.1 million healthcare and frontline workers have been inoculated since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16.
50% of Indians inherited Neanderthal DNA sequence that reduces risk of severe Covid: Study
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IMAGE: Acropora Tenuis is a common coral around Okinawa. It has three distinct color morphs - brown, yellow-green, and purple. Photo credit: Daisuke Kezuka. view more
Credit: Daisuke Kezuka.
Coral within the family
Acropora are fast growers and thus important for reef growth, island formation, and coastal protection but, due to global environmental pressures, are in decline
A species within this family has three different color morphs - brown, yellow-green, and purple, which appear to respond differently to high temperatures
Researchers looked at the different proteins expressed by the different color morphs, to see whether these were related to their resilience to a changing environment
Last year in an
Ancient Origins news article I discussed the findings of Professors Svante Pääbo, who leads the Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit at OIST in Japan, and his colleague Hugo Zeberg. The pair of genetic scientists published a controversial report in
Nature claiming “the greatest genetic risk factor so far identified, doubling the risk to develop severe Covid-19 when infected by the virus, was inherited from Neanderthals.” The paper actually said the Neanderthal gene “increases the risk of developing severe Covid-19.”
Now, the same group of genes has been found to be beneficial to around 20% of people and it can help reduce their risk of becoming seriously ill and being hospitalized with Covid-19. This new research has just been published in
COVID Booster
Neanderthal genes protect us from COVID-19
A group of genes that reduce by 20% a person’s risk of falling seriously ill with COVID-19 was inherited from Neanderthals, according to a new study published in
PNAS.
“Of course, other factors such as advanced age or underlying conditions such as diabetes have a significant impact on how ill an infected individual may become,” says co-author Svante Pääbo from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan. “But genetic factors also play an important role and some of these have been contributed to present-day people by Neanderthals.”
Why 50% Indians will be happy to have some Neanderthal DNA. Hint: It has to do with Covid
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.
Mohana Basu 20 February, 2021 12:06 pm IST
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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.