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The MERS-CoV receptor gene is among COVID-19 risk factors inherited from Neandertals

View ORCID ProfileHugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.11.422139
Hugo Zeberg
1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
2Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, SE-17177 Stockholm, Sweden
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  • ORCID record for Hugo Zeberg
  • For correspondence: hugo.zeberg@ki.se paabo@eva.mpg.de
Svante Pääbo
1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
3Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna-son, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
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  • For correspondence: hugo.zeberg@ki.se paabo@eva.mpg.de
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Abstract

In the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, two genetic regions derived from Neandertals have been shown to increase and decrease, respectively, the risk of falling severely ill upon infection. Here, we show that 2-8% of people in Eurasia carry a variant promoter region of the DPP4 gene inherited from Neandertals. This gene encodes an enzyme that serves as a receptor for the coronavirus MERS-CoV and is currently not believed to be a receptor for SARS-CoV-2. However, the Neandertal DPP4 variant doubles the risk to become critically ill in COVID-19.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted December 12, 2020.
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The MERS-CoV receptor gene is among COVID-19 risk factors inherited from Neandertals
Hugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo
bioRxiv 2020.12.11.422139; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.11.422139
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The MERS-CoV receptor gene is among COVID-19 risk factors inherited from Neandertals
Hugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo
bioRxiv 2020.12.11.422139; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.11.422139

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