Natural selection has changed the genes of Eskimos

Yulia Petrenko, WordYou.ru 

Scientists from Denmark, the UK and the USA conducted a DNA study of the Greenlanders, a northern people whose Inuit ancestors lived in the Arctic tens of thousands of years ago. The Arctic is a region of the Earth with extreme weather conditions: a cold climate, sparse vegetation. The environment forced the Inuit to adapt, and the entire history of the successful survival of the people can be read in the genetic material.

The DNA of 4,500 Greenlanders took part in the study: scientists were interested in changes in genes over the past 20 thousand years. It was then that the ancestors of the Greenlanders definitely had no contact with people from Asia, the East, China. "Comparing the DNA of the Greenlander and the Chinese Han, we immediately found non-random changes in the genetic material. Such changes were the result of genetic adaptation of Greenlanders by natural selection," explains one of the leaders of the study, associate Professor of biology Ida Moltke from the University of Copenhagen (in a press release from UC Berkeley What the Inuit can tell us about omega-3 fats and 'paleo' diets - VM). And scientists have also found that all the identified genes are somehow related to fat, for example, they participate in the synthesis of fatty acids, reports the scientific journal (Science, Fumagalli et al., Greenlandic Inuit show genetic signatures of diet and climate adaptation – VM). This is a valuable observation for nutritionists developing a diet based on a genetic trait.Professor Anders Albrechtsen reports: "By studying the concentrations of fatty acids in the cell membranes of Greenlanders, we found out that only thanks to genetic changes, Greenlandic Eskimos compensate for their habitually high consumption of fatty acids (omega-3 and omega-6) from fish."

But not only the fatty acid marker depends on evolutionary changes in genes. Due to the need to adapt to the environment, there was a certain mutation in the growth of Greenlanders. "This is a very interesting observation, especially if you are familiar with the works on the growth of Europeans. Their growth has never been mentioned in a specific connection with a gene mutation. This is because the genes of Europeans are not predisposed to it, if compared with indigenous peoples. That is why it is so important to study small nationalities, their great advantage is in an isolated life," says Professor Torben Hansen from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Copenhagen Center.

Scientists are immensely interested in working with the genetic material of the inhabitants of Greenland (there are only 57 thousand people). "In the DNA of Greenlanders, a storehouse of the most important information about both diseases and the history of human evolution is encrypted. It is these data that make the DNA of Greenlanders an invaluable new source of knowledge," concludes Professor Hansen. 

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21.09.2015