Amazing stuff! So it is not olive oil and mediterranean cuisine? Just kidding!
"... A new study ... found that Italian centenarians carry a higher proportion of genetic material from Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) compared to the general population. ..."
From the abstract:
"The genetics of human longevity has been primarily studied using classical methods developed in genome-wide association studies.
With the recent advances in paleogenomics, it is now possible to investigate to what extent ancient population ancestries contribute to complex traits.
In this study, we explored the role of ancient genetic components in human longevity by focusing on the Italian Peninsula, whose genetic heritage includes several past genetic ancestries that have contributed to the current European genetic make-up.
We analyzed genome-wide data of 333 Italian centenarians and 690 geographically matched healthy controls, and compared their genetic composition to 103 ancient genomes representative of the main past European population ancestries.
Our findings indicate that Italian centenarians have a higher genetic affinity with Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG)-related ancestry compared to controls, according to PCA and f4-statistics.
Logistic regression models based on supervised admixture revealed a significant association between higher WHG ancestry and the centenarian status.
Additionally, residual-based predictive analysis showed that centenarians exhibit a significantly higher WHG contribution independent of the genetic structuring of the general Italian population.
By painting the chromosomes of modern Italians, we also showed a significantly higher number of WHG alleles at pro-longevity SNPs.
In the present study, we demonstrate the contribution of ancient genetic components to the longevity phenotype. In particular, we showed a greater contribution from Western Hunter-Gatherer-related ancestry to Italian centenarians, thus suggesting that this pre-Neolithic genetic component, which has been linked to population shifts occurring within Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum, could be beneficial for longevity today."
Western Hunter-Gatherer genetic ancestry contributes to human longevity in the Italian population (open access)
Fig. 2 Results of the PCA projection analysis.
A Scatterplot with genetic components of 333 CENT, 690 ITA, and selected ancient individuals from the four basal ancient ancestral groups (47 WHG, 14 Iran_N/CHG, 26 Turkey_N, and 16 Yamnaya_EBA) projected onto the modern Euro-Mediterranean reference space.
B Boxplots displaying the distribution of Euclidean distances between CENT or ITA individuals and the centroid of each of the four considered ancestral groups
A Scatterplot with genetic components of 333 CENT, 690 ITA, and selected ancient individuals from the four basal ancient ancestral groups (47 WHG, 14 Iran_N/CHG, 26 Turkey_N, and 16 Yamnaya_EBA) projected onto the modern Euro-Mediterranean reference space.
B Boxplots displaying the distribution of Euclidean distances between CENT or ITA individuals and the centroid of each of the four considered ancestral groups
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