Neanderthals Leave Their Mark on Us

Excerpt:  “Both studies suggest that Neanderthal genes involved in skin and hair were favored by natural selection in humans. Today, they’re very common in living non-Asians.”

See also:

Which parts of us are Neanderthal? Our genes point to skin and hair

Excerpt: “”It’s a pretty fascinating way of adapting to an environment,” Akey said. “Instead of resting on your laurels, waiting for an adaptation to appear, you just pick one up from the local population.”

My comment: Ecological adaptations are nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled. Those two Biological Laws: 1) nutrient-dependent and 2) pheromone-controlled, were included when I extended the mouse model of ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction to humans and referenced works from Harvard researchers: Kamberov et al (2013) and Grossman et al (2013). They showed that a base pair change resulted in a single amino acid substitution that differentiated the cell types of hair, teeth, skin, and mammary tissue in a modern human population that arose in what is now central China during the past 30,000 years.

What’s happening now is that researchers are trying to stick with aspects of mutation-driven evolution and natural selection at the same time Kohl’s Biological Laws have already shown it is not biologically plausible because the adaptations happen too quickly. Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptations are biologically plausible and my model has been ecologically validated across species from microbes to man.

Nutrient-dependent/pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution: a model https://www.socioaffectiveneuroscipsychol.net/index.php/snp/article/view/20553/27989

“Two additional recent reports link substitution of the amino acid alanine for the amino acid valine (Grossman et al., 2013) to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution. The alanine substitution for valine does not appear to be under any selection pressure in mice. The cause-and-effect relationship was established in mice by comparing the effects of the alanine, which is under selection pressure in humans, via its substitution for valine in mice (Kamberov et al., 2013).

These two reports (Grossman et al., 2013; Kamberov et al., 2013) tell a new short story of adaptive evolution. The story begins with what was probably a nutrient-dependent variant allele that arose in central China approximately 30,000 years ago. The effect of the allele is adaptive and it is manifested in the context of an effect on sweat, skin, hair, and teeth. In other mammals, like the mouse, the effect on sweat, skin, hair, and teeth is due to an epigenetic effect of nutrients on hormones responsible for the tweaking of immense gene networks that metabolize nutrients to pheromones. The pheromones control the nutrient-dependent hormone-dependent organization and activation of reproductive sexual behavior in mammals such as mice and humans, but also in invertebrates as previously indicated.”

Kohl’s Biological Laws

Life is nutrient-dependent. That is a Biological Law. The ecological origin of all biological laws is apparent 1) in the context of systems biology (P. Kohl, Crampin, Quinn, & Noble, 2010); 2) in the context of the metabolism of nutrients by microbes (K. D. Kohl, 2012); and 3) in the context of how the metabolism of nutrients results in species-specific pheromones that control the physiology of reproduction (J. Kohl, Ostrovsky, Frechter, & Jefferis, 2013). Taken together, the systems biology of nutrient metabolism to species-specific pheromones that control the physiology of reproduction can be expressed in a summary of Kohl’s Laws of Biology: 1) Life is nutrient-dependent (J. V. Kohl, 2012) and 2) The physiology of reproduction is pheromone-controlled (J. V. Kohl, 2013).

Kohl, J., Ostrovsky, Aaron D., Frechter, S., & Jefferis, Gregory S. X. E. (2013). A Bidirectional Circuit Switch Reroutes Pheromone Signals in Male and Female Brains. Cell, 155(7), 1610-1623.

Kohl, J. V. (2012). Human pheromones and food odors: epigenetic influences on the socioaffective nature of evolved behaviors. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, 2(17338).

Kohl, J. V. (2013). Nutrient–dependent / pheromone–controlled adaptive evolution: a model. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, 3(20553).

Kohl, K. D. (2012). Diversity and function of the avian gut microbiota. Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 182(5), 591-602.

Kohl, P., Crampin, E. J., Quinn, T. A., & Noble, D. (2010). Systems Biology: An Approach. Clin Pharmacol Ther, 88(1), 25-33.