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Published online 9 September 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070903-21
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The gene that makes your mouth water
Ability to digest starch could have spurred human evolution.
Spit might have helped human evolution by enabling our ancestors to harvest more energy from starch than their primate cousins.
Compared with chimpanzees, humans boast many more copies of the gene that makes salivary amylase — a saliva enzyme that breaks down starch into digestible sugars.
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