
The phenotypic legacy of admixture between modern humans and Neandertals [pdf] - gwern
http://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-simonti.pdf
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trhway
>Neandertal SNPs explained a significant [likelihood ratio test; false
discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05 over all phenotype tests] percent of the risk in
three traits in the E1 discovery cohort (Table 1): depression (2.03%,P =
0.0036), myocardial infarction (1.39%,P =0.0026), and corns and callosities
(1.26%,P= 0.01). Neandertal SNPs also explained a nom-inally significant (P<
0.1) percent of risk for nine additional traits, including actinic and
seborrheic keratosis, coronary atherosclerosis, and obesity (Table 1).

sounds like only obese/depressed/ill Neandertals agreed to interbreed with
Cro-Magnons. May be being that picky is what did them?

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openasocket
It could also be an emergent property of the inter-breeding. Maybe those
particular genes are fine in Neandertals, but combined with some Cro-Magnon
genes leads to depression. I know that if you interbreed a lion and a tiger to
make a "liger" the resulting hybrid grows to be larger than either lions or
tigers; something similar could be happening here.

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thaumasiotes
Take this in the spirit of fun facts, but the liger largeness phenomenon is
not well described by the analogy "Maybe those particular genes are fine in
Neandertals, but combined with some Cro-Magnon genes leads to depression".

Liger largeness (and the word "liger") is specific to the offspring of a male
lion and a female tiger; the offspring of a male tiger and a female lion (a
"tiglon" or "tigon") doesn't grow so large. What's going on is that lions
_rely_ on their mates being other lions -- male lions imprint their sperm in a
way that promotes growth of the cub (which is a drain on the lioness's milk
production) and female lions imprint their eggs so as to inhibit growth. It's
not an interaction between lion genes and tiger genes that produces excessive
growth, it is the male-imprinted lion genes failing to meet the female-
imprinted genes they've evolved to rely on.

The same phenomenon (in terms of genetic arms race between the sexes -- it's
phenotypically different) occurs in humans under the names Prader-Willi
syndrome (maternal genes fail to meet paternal resistance) and Angelman
Syndrome (other way around).

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biomcgary
This high-profile publication is interesting because it combines an
evolutionary perspective with new approaches to analyzing electronic health
records.

