Research report 2015 - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Genetic adaptation to levels of dietary selenium in recent human history
Authors
White, Louise; Castellano, Sergi
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig
Summary
The micronutrient selenium is an essential part of the human diet. As humans migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago they came to settle in environments with vastly differing selenium levels. Researchers of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found evidence that human populations who live in regions that provide insufficient dietary selenium show signals of adaptation in the genes that use or regulate selenium.