His team believes that the Neanderthal gene changes how a cell behaves when the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to the ACE2 receptor in a human cell.
In most people, this causes the cell to change shape and become less specialized and less prone to infection, preventing the progression of the infection.
“What makes this high-risk variant is that it creates a new signal that this gene stays a little too long in response to infection,” said Professor Davies.
“And so they stay in that state where they are highly specialized and prone to infection for longer.”
The death toll worldwide for this disastrous genetic variant “is between hundreds of thousands and a million,” he told the audience.
‘Dinner’ between humans and Neanderthals
Dr. Davies and his colleague at Oxford Brookes University, Dr. Simon Underdown, a biological anthropologist, also revealed that the Neanderthal gene first infiltrated humans 60,000 years ago after a romantic bond. and a cross-species appointment between a human and a Neanderthal. A solitary mating event between the species lines saw the deadly Covid gene jump from our now extinct cousin species to us.
“If this dinner date between humans and Neanderthals had gone wrong, we would have had a much better time at Covid, we would have had hundreds of thousands fewer deaths,” Professor Davies said.
“The reason we know this is that it’s inherited as this blog with 28 single letter changes, and you can keep track of that to the end and it should be a single event. You’re very unlikely to get it. all 28 changes at the same time and in the same blog “.
Neanderthals “looked like us”
Dr. Underwood added that Neanderthals would probably have looked very similar to humans.
“Maybe, they look like us,” he said. “If you put one of these guys in a hat and a coat … you wouldn’t give it a second look.
“What would happen when a Neanderthal came in contact with Homo sapiens? I would even recognize them as different? I’d say they wouldn’t.”
“They would have thought they were unusual in that they didn’t look exactly alike, but they were similar enough that they probably wouldn’t have even known it was something so different.
“We see that the integration of Neanderthals, or sex, took place about 60,000 years ago after they left Africa and this is the event where the James gene jumps.
“This is the event where the gene that gives you the most serious Covid jumps into the Homo lineage they knew.”