COVID-19 Surge: Neanderthals and the Blame Game

According to foreign media reports, James Davis, associate professor of genetics at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK, said that the possible source of susceptibility to the virus in the lungs of modern humans is a tens of thousands of years ago between Neanderthals and early humans. “Romantic Encounter”, assuming that such interspecies mating and genetic mutation inheritance does not occur, modern humans will be more resistant to the novel coronavirus, and the number of deaths will be greatly reduced.

Neanderthal-derived genes are said to appear in modern humans, and one of them, LZTFL1, is believed to have a unique effect on lung cells.

Lung cells with the LZTFL1 gene produce an important protein on the surface that the coronavirus can attach to and spread through the lungs, causing transmissible and deadly damage. This gene variant is more common in people of South Asian descent.