PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hugo Zeberg
AU  - Svante Pääbo
TI  - The MERS-CoV receptor gene is among COVID-19 risk factors inherited from Neandertals
AID  - 10.1101/2020.12.11.422139
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.12.11.422139
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/12/2020.12.11.422139.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/12/2020.12.11.422139.full
AB  - 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 StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.