John Hawks at his own website:
On the long arm of chromosome 12 is a gene called MUC19. It’s one of a family of genes that encode proteins called mucins, which provide mucus and mucus membranes their slippery, gelatinous consistency.
Some people have a haplotype spanning part of this gene that came into present-day populations from archaic ancestors. Two of the known Neanderthal genomes, from Vindija and Chagyrskaya, each have copies of a very similar haplotype. So does the Denisova 3 genome.
The story of MUC19 has been uncovered by Fernando Villanea and coworkers, in a preprint that they released last year, and now published in Science. From the sequence of mutational and recombinational changes to the haplotype, they worked out that the gene started in Denisovans, introgressed into late Neanderthals, and from them into modern people.
It’s a game of genetic telephone.
More here.
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