{"id":55756,"date":"2018-02-20T00:53:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T00:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55756"},"modified":"2018-02-20T00:58:24","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T00:58:24","slug":"new-gene-variants-reveal-the-evolution-of-human-skin-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55756","title":{"rendered":"New gene variants reveal the evolution of human skin color"},"content":{"rendered":"

New gene variants reveal the evolution of human skin color<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Science<\/a>
\n2017-11-12<\/p>\n

Ann Gibbons<\/strong><\/a>, Contributing Correspondent<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nResearchers have identified genes that help create diverse skin tones, such as those seen in the Agaw<\/a> (left) and Surma<\/a> (right) peoples of Africa<\/a>.
\nALESSIA RANCIARO & DR. SIMON R. THOMPSON<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Most people associate Africans with dark skin. But different groups of people in Africa<\/a> have almost every skin color on the planet, from deepest black in the Dinka<\/a> of South Sudan<\/a> to beige in the San<\/a> of South Africa<\/a>. Now, researchers have discovered a handful of new gene variants responsible for this palette of tones.<\/p>\n

The study, published online this week in Science<\/em><\/a>, traces the evolution of these genes and how they traveled around the world. While the dark skin of some Pacific Islanders<\/a> can be traced to Africa, gene variants from Eurasia<\/a> also seem to have made their way back to Africa. And surprisingly, some of the mutations responsible for lighter skin in Europeans turn out to have an ancient African origin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really a landmark study of skin color diversity,\u201d says geneticist Greg Barsh<\/a> of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers agree that our early australopithecine<\/a> ancestors in Africa probably had light skin beneath hairy pelts. \u201cIf you shave a chimpanzee, its skin is light,\u201d says evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff<\/a> of the University of Pennsylvania, the lead author of the new study. \u201cIf you have body hair, you don\u2019t need dark skin to protect you from ultraviolet [UV] radiation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until recently, researchers assumed that after human ancestors shed most body hair, sometime before 2 million years ago, they quickly evolved dark skin for protection from skin cancer and other harmful effects of UV radiation. Then, when humans migrated out of Africa and headed to the far north, they evolved lighter skin as an adaptation to limited sunlight. (Pale skin synthesizes more vitamin D when light is scarce<\/a>.)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people associate Africans with dark skin. But different groups of people in Africa have almost every skin color on the planet, from deepest black in the Dinka of South Sudan to beige in the San of South Africa. Now, researchers have discovered a handful of new gene variants responsible for this palette of tones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,2039,8],"tags":[19818,28058,16795,22898,17567,2471,27750],"class_list":["post-55756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","tag-ann-gibbons","tag-greg-barsh","tag-nina-jablonski","tag-sarah-tishkoff","tag-science","tag-science-magazine","tag-skin-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55756"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55760,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55756\/revisions\/55760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}