| Title: | Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe |
| Journal: | Nature |
| Published: | 27 Jul 2022 |
| Pubmed: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35896751/ |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05010-7 |
| URL: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7615474 |
| Citations: | 74 (65 in last 2 years) as of 8 Aug 2024 |
Publication 12291
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Abstract
In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years1. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions2,3. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank4,5 cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation - proxies for these drivers - provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.</p>
19 Keywords
- Animals
- Animals, Wild
- Archaeology
- Biological Specimen Banks
- Ceramics
- Cohort Studies
- Dairying
- Disease
- Europe
- Famine
- Gene Frequency
- Genetics, Population
- Genotype
- History, Ancient
- Humans
- Lactase
- Milk
- Selection, Genetic
- United Kingdom
108 Authors
- Richard P. Evershed
- George Davey Smith
- Mélanie Roffet-Salque
- Adrian Timpson
- Yoan Diekmann
- Matthew S. Lyon
- Lucy J. E. Cramp
- Emmanuelle Casanova
- Jessica Smyth
- Helen L. Whelton
- Julie Dunne
- Veronika Brychova
- Lucija Šoberl
- Pascale Gerbault
- Rosalind E. Gillis
- Volker Heyd
- Emily Johnson
- Iain Kendall
- Katie Manning
- Arkadiusz Marciniak
- Alan K. Outram
- Jean-Denis Vigne
- Stephen Shennan
- Andrew Bevan
- Sue Colledge
- Lyndsay Allason-Jones
- Luc Amkreutz
- Alexandra Anders
- Rose-Marie Arbogast
- Adrian Bălăşescu
- Eszter Bánffy
- Alistair Barclay
- Anja Behrens
- Peter Bogucki
- Ángel Carrancho Alonso
- José Miguel Carretero
- Nigel Cavanagh
- Erich Claßen
- Hipolito Collado Giraldo
- Matthias Conrad
- Piroska Csengeri
- Lech Czerniak
- Maciej Dębiec
- Anthony Denaire
- László Domboróczki
- Christina Donald
- Julia Ebert
- Christopher Evans
- Marta Francés-Negro
- Detlef Gronenborn
- Fabian Haack
- Matthias Halle
- Caroline Hamon
- Roman Hülshoff
- Michael Ilett
- Eneko Iriarte
- János Jakucs
- Christian Jeunesse
- Melanie Johnson
- Andy M. Jones
- Necmi Karul
- Dmytro Kiosak
- Nadezhda Kotova
- Rüdiger Krause
- Saskia Kretschmer
- Marta Krüger
- Philippe Lefranc
- Olivia Lelong
- Eva Lenneis
- Andrey Logvin
- Friedrich Lüth
- Tibor Marton
- Jane Marley
- Richard Mortimer
- Luiz Oosterbeek
- Krisztián Oross
- Juraj Pavúk
- Joachim Pechtl
- Pierre Pétrequin
- Joshua Pollard
- Richard Pollard
- Dominic Powlesland
- Joanna Pyzel
- Pál Raczky
- Andrew Richardson
- Peter Rowe
- Stephen Rowland
- Ian Rowlandson
- Thomas Saile
- Katalin Sebők
- Wolfram Schier
- Germo Schmalfuß
- Svetlana Sharapova
- Helen Sharp
- Alison Sheridan
- Irina Shevnina
- Iwona Sobkowiak-Tabaka
- Peter Stadler
- Harald Stäuble
- Astrid Stobbe
- Darko Stojanovski
- Nenad Tasić
- Ivo van Wijk
- Ivana Vostrovská
- Jasna Vuković
- Sabine Wolfram
- Andrea Zeeb-Lanz
- Mark G. Thomas
1 Application
| Application ID | Title |
|---|---|
| 16729 | MR-PheWAS: hypothesis prioritization among potential causal effects of body mass index on many outcomes with Mendelian randomisation, using 500K participants of the UK biobank |
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health