FRIDAY, Oct. 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Folks who struggle to reduce their carb intake might be able to blame ancient DNA still lurking in humans, a new study suggests. Humans carry multiple copies of the salivary amylase gene (AMY1), which helps begin breaking down starch in the mouth -- the first step in digesting carb-laden foods like bread and pasta, researchers said.
The duplication of this gene might have occurred as far back as more than 800,000 years ago, long before the advent of farming, and it helped shape human adaptation to starchy foods, researchers argue. Amylase is an enzyme that breaks down starch into glucose, and it also gives bread its distinctive taste, researchers said. "The idea is that the more amylase genes you have, the more amylase you can produce and the more starch you can digest effectively,” said researcher Omer Gokcumen , a professor of biological sciences with the University of Buffalo.
For the study, researchers analyzed the genetics of 68 ancient human bodies, including a person who lived 45,000 years ago in Siberia. They found that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers carried an average of four to eight AMY1 copies in their genetic makeup, suggesting that people already had adapted to eating starchy foods long before they began growing foods like wheat and potatoes. AMY1 gene duplications also were found in ancient human ancestors like Neanderthals and Denisovans, the researchers added.
“This suggests that the AMY1 gene may have first du.
