Journal article
Herders of indian and european cattle share their predominant allele for lactase persistence
IG Romero, CB Mallick, A Liebert, F Crivellaro, G Chaubey, Y Itan, M Metspalu, M Eaaswarkhanth, R Pitchappan, R Villems, D Reich, L Singh, K Thangaraj, MG Thomas, DM Swallow, MM Lahr, T Kivisild
Molecular Biology and Evolution | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2012
Abstract
Milk consumption and lactose digestion after weaning are exclusively human traits made possible by the continued production of the enzyme lactase in adulthood. Multiple independent mutations in a 100-bp region-part of an enhancer-Approximately 14-kb upstream of the LCT gene are associated with this trait in Europeans and pastoralists from Saudi Arabia and Africa. However, a single mutation of purported western Eurasian origin accounts for much of observed lactase persistence outside Africa. Given the high levels of present-day milk consumption in India, together with archaeological and genetic evidence for the independent domestication of cattle in the Indus valley roughly 7,000 years ago, w..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by Seventh Framework Programme
Funding Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to all the individuals who donated samples for this work and to Dr V. R. Rao and Dr Madhu Bala Sharma at the Anthropological Survey of India and G. Arun Kumar for their collaboration with this work. Dr Jakka Parthasarathy and Anurag Kadian aided in the collection of pastoralist samples. We thank Mari Nelis, Georgi Hudjashov, and Viljo Soo for conducting the autosomal genotyping. This work was supported by the UK-India Education Research Initiative (grant number RG47772), the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme Internal Training Networks (LeCHE, grant number 215362-2), the European Union Seventh Framework Programme Eco-gene (grant number 205419), the European Union Regional Development Fund through a Centre of Excellence in Genomics award, and a Bhatnagar Fellowship from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India. Web resources: GLAD database: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/resources/glad; NETWORK: http://www.fluxus-engineering.com/sharenet.htm; and OMIM: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim