Vita Stepanova et al, Reduced purine biosynthesis in humans after their divergence from Neandertals, eLife (2021). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58741

Journal information: eLife

Provided by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

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DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:

> Vita Stepanova et al, Reduced purine biosynthesis in humans after their divergence
> from Neandertals, eLife (2021). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58741
>
> Journal information: eLife
>
> Provided by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
>
> Feedback to editors

I dunno, seems like exactly the kind of thing we'd expect to find after
bottle neck events. Hss would have come from a different climate,
closer to the equator, which is why it could recover so much more
quickly after Toba. They also appear to have been sexually selected,
so a mutation such as this doesn't have to pose any kind of
survival advantage. In fact, as evolution occurs on the level of a
POPULATION, not the individual, and sexually selected populations
are a quantity-over-quality survival strategy, a mutation that is a
DISADVANTAGE to the individual, especially over years, might be a
distinct ADVANTAGE.... making room for all the new babies... keeping
the population down.

See? This is the problem with evolution; explanations are limited
only by our imaginations. And the DNA tells us WHAT it is, not how
or why it got that way.

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