According to research carried out jointly by scientists from the Catalan Institute of Oncology and the French National Research Center (CNRS), the sexual relations that modern humans and Neanderthals have sporadically have left a lethal sequel: HPV16, the technical way of calling to the human papillomavirus that causes more anogenital tumors, especially of the cervix .
It has been known for a long time that between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis there was genetic exchange: we all carry between 2% and 4% of Neanderthal DNA inside , and this legacy, apart from being responsible for some of our physiological characteristics, is related to disorders such as nicotine addiction or depression. The new study suggests that HPV16 infections are also a consequence of those “chance” encounters.
The experts came to this conclusion after analyzing the DNA of about a thousand people belonging to more than 50 different populations, available in the archives of the Human Genome Diversity Project, and comparing the information with the biological history of the papilloma virus.
As Ville Pimenoff, co-director of the article, has declared to the SINC agency, the coevolution between our ancestors and microorganisms only explains 30% of the variability of the latter : “the results clearly indicate that variant A (also exists in version B, C and D, less aggressive) did not originate in modern humans, but was much older . And the times coincide with Neanderthals and Denisovans, the other evolutionary branch that was followed by the first humans who left Africa about 500,000 years ago. ” .
In addition, Neanderthal inheritance (specifically, a group of genes related to our immune system and the formation of the epithelium) could explain why HPV16 becomes chronic and causes cancer in certain individuals, when up to 80% of adults with a active sex life is infected with it sometime.
