SCIENCE@home

Lactase Persistence Variants in Arabia and in the African Arabs

Edita Priehodová,Abdelhay Abdelsawy,E. Heyer,V. Černý

Published 2014 in Human Biology: The Official Publication of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT Lactase persistence (LP), the state enabling the digestion of milk sugar in adulthood, occurs only in some human populations. The convergent and independent origin of this physiological ability in Europe and Africa is linked with animal domestication that either had started in both places independently or had spread from the Near East by acculturation. However, it has recently been shown that at least in its southern parts, the population of Arabia not only has a different LP-associated mutation profile than the rest of Africa and Europe but also had experienced an independent demographic expansion occurring before the Neolithic around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. In Arabia, LP is associated with tion -13,915G and not, as in Europe, with -13,910*T or, as in Africa, with -13,907*G and -14,010*C. We show here that, in Arabia, -13,915*G frequency conforms to a partial clinal pattern and that this specific mutation has likely been spread from Arabia to Africa only recently from the sixth century AD onward by nomadic Arabs (Bedouins) looking for new pastures. Arabic populations in Africa that still maintain a nomadic way of life also have more -13,915*G variants and fewer sub-Saharan L-type mitochondrial DNA haplogroups; this observation matches archaeological and historical records suggesting that the migration of Arabic pastoralists was accompanied by gradual sedentarization that allowed for admixture with the local African population.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2014

  • Venue

    Human Biology: The Official Publication of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics

  • Publication date

    2014-09-17

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Medicine, Geography, History

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.3378/027.086.0101PMID 25401983
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar, PubMed

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-57 of 57 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-22 of 22 citing papers · Page 1 of 1