***Variant of the gene responsible for “cleaning” glucose helped our ancestors to make to switch to agriculture. Nowadays the same gene is helping us to deal with all the sugars in our modern diet.***
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Evolution never sleeps. Once the living conditions for an organism change it selects the individuals who are better suited for the changed conditions. Those than forward their talents to the next generations and those are capable of dealing with the new conditions even better. That is the basic principle behind evolution.
Nowadays it is clear that humans have adapted to changes that they have themselves started. The best example seems to be the ability to digest lactose that appeared after humans started to keep farm animals and consume their milk. Now modern times also bring several drastic changes to our living conditions. For the first time ever, many people have enough food and even the food we like the best – fat, sweets and salty. And that isn’t something that pairs well with our newly found sedentary lifestyles as is clearly shown by the world obesity epidemics or the hypertension epidemics and the cardiovascular disease epidemics.
That brings a question. Why haven’t humans adapted through evolution to be better suited to fight these diseases?
There are several possible explanations. Our DNA might not have any variants of genes that would make us more durable. The same way we don’t have any genes that would make us resilient against car crashes. Another option is that we have such genes, but evolution isn’t being stressed enough as even people who suffer from these problems still manage to pass on their genes. This might be quite possibly the solution as many of the effects of eating unhealthy food don’t take shape until a later age when most people don’t have children anymore.
But there is also a third option that seems to have appeared. The resistance is there but we haven’t noticed it yet.
A team led by Frances Brodsky from the London University College found that under the effects of a high sugar diet the CLTCL1 gene changes. The CHC22 protein is made thanks to this gene and this protein is partially responsible for transporting glucose in fat and muscles.
More specifically, when we eat and a large amount of food and a lot of sugars are in our blood the hormone insulin is responsible for taking it into fat and muscle cells. Proteins that work sort of like “vacuums” push the cells out. The CHC22 protein then makes the “vacuum” proteins go back into the cells and allows for a certain amount of sugars to remain in blood. This is important as if the “vacuums” took too much sugar into the cells we would quickly collapse.
Frances Brodsky and her coworkers found that the CLTCL1 gene exists in several different variants and the evolutionary newest one hold the “vacuums” inside of the cells less firmly. This allows the “vacuums” to stay outside for a longer time. For people who consume a highly caloric diet, this would prove to be quite the advantage as it would allow bringing the levels of blood sugars to reasonable much faster.
The “anti-sugar” variant of the CLTCL1 gene has started appearing in humanity with the start of agriculture when people started to have easier access to more caloric food than our hunter/gatherer ancestors had. And lately, as we switched to food even more rich in sugars this new variant seems to be even more advantageous.
**Sources:**
* https://elifesciences.org/articles/41517
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