French fries, pasta, bread — we humans love carbs. But what explains this love for starchy and sugary foods? The answer might lie in ancient roots. A new study published in the Science journal on Thursday offers the first hereditary evidence for early carb-laden diets.
Let’s take a closer look. The study Researchers based at The Jackson Laboratory in Connecticut’s Farmington and the University of Buffalo in New York analysed the genomes of 68 ancient humans, including one that lived 45,000 years ago. They focused on a gene called AMY1, which produces an enzyme called amylase.
Amylase helps digest complex carbohydrates from the moment a starchy food enters our mouth. Produced in the salivary glands and the pancreas, it is also the reason why even non-sugary carbs like bread sometimes taste sweet, according to Smithsonian magazine. Modern humans today have varying numbers of amylase genes in their DNA — some with as many as 11 AMY1 copies per chromosome.
These copies appear to be specific to humans. For example, chimpanzees, who also produce amylase, only have a single copy of the gene. Findings The genetic foundations of the human ability to digest carbohydrates date back more than 800,000 years, which is significantly earlier than previously believed and predates the development of agriculture.
Despite the fact that our species had not yet developed agriculture, the team’s analysis of ancient human DNA revealed that hunter-gatherers already had an average of four to.
