Those with autism in three racial groups, black non-hispanic, white non-hispanic, and white hispanic all showed more rare Neanderthal genetic variants.
"Our results are a little more nuanced than ‘autistic people are just more Neanderthal.’ We’ve found that autistic people, on average, have more rare Neanderthal variants, not that they have more Neanderthal DNA in general."
Interesting stuff. When a species or subgroup is completely outcompeted by another with which it has interbred, it is often the case that the few genes they leave behind in the population confer some advantage, such as Tibetan high-altitude genes. Though not always. Susceptibility to various diseases can also occur in this way.
2 comments:
I thought sub-Saharans didn't have a lot of Neander ancestry.
I think that is why they were hedging on it being anything more than an increase. There may be a lot of ways to get from Point A to Point B.
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