The disease from the new type of coronavirus can proceed in a mild or even asymptomatic form, and for
In order to understand the reasons for such a different course of the disease in patients, Hugo Zeberg and the Nobel laureateSvante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology investigated one of the most dangerous genetic variations associated with severe coronavirus infection: the SLC6A20 gene and several adjacent DNA regions.
Scientists noticed that the genes of the third chromosome associated with the coronavirus were isolated into two separate structures that were unusually long for interconnected regions of the genome.Interestingly, the segments of DNA that we have inherited fromNeanderthals.
In addition, for susceptibility to coronavirusthe promoter region of the DPP4 gene responds: it is a widely expressed extracellular dipeptidyl peptidase involved in immune function and glucose metabolism. As it turned out, DPP4 is also a receptor gene for the MERS coronavirus
Interestingly, the "Neanderthal" version of the thirdchromosomes are found among different populations of people with very different frequencies. It is most often found in the genomes of residents of South Asia and Europe, while in other regions of the world its prevalence was much lower.
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