You saw this variant and you just looked through the Neanderthal genome and then you saw, "Oh my God, they're exactly the same". And then we have the genome of people living today and we can just compare the genome to the Neanderthal genome. Hugo - We have three really good genomes from Neanderthals. Phil - Not to question you of course Hugo, but how do you know? Phil - So this gene variant comes to us directly from Neanderthals? It's missing in East Asia and it's missing in Africa. Or people with European ancestry, that's one in six. So for a genetic variant, this is a quite strong effect. So the latest studies put this risk at 100% risk increase. Phil - Oh, really? Do we know how much more likely? People carrying this variance are more likely to end up in the hospital with Covid-19 and end up in the intensive care unit. So we don't really know what gene it is, but we see the effects. Hugo - This is a variant on chromosome 2, and there's a lot of genes in this region. And when Hugo Zeberg at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology heard about it, he discovered the Neanderthal link. This genetic variant is about 50,000 letters of DNA long, and a study across the whole human genome identified it as the only major genetic risk factor for serious coronavirus infections. Scientists have discovered that a piece of genetic code in some people that makes them more likely to get severe COVID-19 actually comes to us directly from Neanderthals.
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