Diet, Changes in Gene Expression and Human Evolution

Francesca Luca, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

Published online: April 2012

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0023644

Changes in food availability and diet represent selective pressures that acted on multiple biological processes and anatomical features during human evolution. Anthropological studies have long investigated these dietary transitions; however, many questions are still open and aspects of these events are still strongly debated. More recently, evolutionary geneticists have provided evidence, both genome‐wide and from single‐gene studies, that diet is an important evolutionary force in humans. Changes in regulation of gene expression have played a major role during human evolution in response to a variety of selective pressures including dietary transitions. Furthermore, recent studies have highlighted the role of variation in gene regulation in risk for common diseases. Future studies promise to leverage the information from variation in gene expression to learn about adaptations to dietary shifts and disease predisposition in humans.

Key Concepts:

  • Changes in food availability and diet composition during hominin evolution created strong selective pressures on multiple biological processes and anatomical features.
  • Genes involved in metabolism carry a signature of selection in single‐gene and genome‐wide studies.
  • The two most interpretable examples of genetic adaptations to dietary shifts in humans have implied changes in the expression level of the lactase and amylase genes.
  • Adaptations to dietary changes may have acted on different molecular aspects of regulation of gene expression.
  • By gaining further knowledge on past human diets, it is possible to achieve a better understanding of potential adaptations to and clinical consequences of our current ones.

Keywords: natural selection; evolutionary genetics; dietary shift; transcription factor; eQTL; mRNA

Figure 1. The distribution of salivary amylase copy number in the population samples analysed by Perry et al. (2007). The bar chart represents the average copy number for each sample (error bars represent two standard errors). Reproduced from Novembre et al. (2007) with permission from Nature.
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Related Sub-Topics:

Adaptive Evolution | Molecular Evolution | Selection and Variation | Human Evolution | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules
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Article Title: Diet, Changes in Gene Expression and Human Evolution
 
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Luca, Francesca(Apr 2012) Diet, Changes in Gene Expression and Human Evolution. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0023644]