The MUC19 gene in Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Modern Humans: An Evolutionary History of Recurrent Introgression and Natural Selection

Fernando Villanea (1) , David Peede (2) , Eli Kaufman (3) , Valeria Añorve-Garibay (4, 5) , Kelsey Witt (6) , Viridiana Villa-Islas (5) , Roberta Zeloni (7) , Davide Marnetto (7) , Priya Moorjani (8) , Flora Jay (9, 10) , Paul Valdmanis (3) , María Ávila-Arcos (5) , Emilia Huerta-Sánchez (4)

1 University of Colorado [Boulder]
2 UNC - University of North Carolina [Chapel Hill]
3 Washington University School of Medicine [Saint Louis, MO]
4 Brown University
5 UNAM - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México = National Autonomous University of Mexico
6 Clemson University
7 UNITO - Università degli studi di Torino = University of Turin
8 UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley]
9 BioInfo - BioInformatique - LISN
10 TAU - TAckling the Underspecified

Abstract All humans carry a small fraction of archaic ancestry across the genome, the legacy of gene flow from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other hominids into the ancestors of modern humans. While the effects of Neanderthal ancestry on human fitness and health have been explored more thoroughly, there are fewer examples of adaptive introgression of Denisovan variants. Here, we study the gene MUC19 , for which some modern humans carry a Denisovan-like haplotype. MUC19 is a mucin, a glycoprotein that forms gels with various biological functions, from lubrication to immunity. We find the diagnostic variants for the Denisovan-like MUC19 haplotype at high frequencies in admixed Latin American individuals among global population, and at highest frequency in 23 ancient Indigenous American individuals, all predating population admixture with Europeans and Africans. We find that some Neanderthals––Vindija and Chagyrskaya––carry the Denisovan-like MUC19 haplotype, and that it was likely introgressed into human populations through Neanderthal introgression rather than Denisovan introgression. Finally, we find that the Denisovan-like MUC19 haplotype carries a higher copy number of a 30 base-pair variable number tandem repeat relative to the Human-like haplotype, and that copy numbers of this repeat are exceedingly high in American populations. Our results suggest that the Denisovan-like MUC19 haplotype served as the raw genetic material for positive selection as American populations adapted to novel environments during their movement from Beringia into North and then South America.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Fernando Villanea, David Peede, Eli Kaufman, Valeria Añorve-Garibay, Kelsey Witt, et al.. The MUC19 gene in Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Modern Humans: An Evolutionary History of Recurrent Introgression and Natural Selection. 2023. ⟨hal-04244022⟩