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Gene-culture coevolution between cattle milk protein genes and human lactase genes

Nature Genetics volume 35, pages 311–313 (2003)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 01 January 2004

Abstract

Milk from domestic cows has been a valuable food source for over 8,000 years, especially in lactose-tolerant human societies that exploit dairy breeds. We studied geographic patterns of variation in genes encoding the six most important milk proteins in 70 native European cattle breeds. We found substantial geographic coincidence between high diversity in cattle milk genes, locations of the European Neolithic cattle farming sites (>5,000 years ago) and present-day lactose tolerance in Europeans. This suggests a gene-culture coevolution between cattle and humans.

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Figure 1: Geographic coincidence between milk gene diversity in cattle, lactose tolerance in humans and locations of Neolithic cattle farming sites in NCE.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Zvelebil for ideas and discussion. A.B.-P. is supported by a grant from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through the Graduate Programme in Areas of Basic and Applied Biology, and the work was partially supported by a Praxis project grant. G.L. and P.R.E. were funded by the European Union (Econogene). D.G.B. is a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, Génomique des Populations et Biodiversité, CNRS UMR 5553, Université Joseph Fourier, B.P. 53, Grenoble, 38041 Cedex 9, France

    Albano Beja-Pereira, Gordon Luikart & Phillip R England

  2. Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO-UP) and Secção Autónoma de Ciências Agrárias, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Rua Padre Armando Quintas, Vairão (VCD), 4485-661, Portugal

    Albano Beja-Pereira & Nuno Ferrand

  3. Department of Genetics, Smurfit Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, 2, Ireland

    Daniel G Bradley

  4. Institut für Tierzucht und Haustiergenetik, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Ludwigstr. 21b, Gießen, 35390, Germany

    Oliver C Jann & Georg Erhardt

  5. Department of Biology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, 44100, Italy

    Giorgio Bertorelle

  6. Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 4ET, UK

    Andrew T Chamberlain

  7. CIISA/UISEE/DETSA, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária, Polo Universitário da Ajuda, Rua Prof. Cid dos Santos, Lisboa, 1300-477, Portugal

    Telmo P Nunes

  8. Department of Genetics and Animal Breeding, Thracian University, Agricultural Faculty, Stara Zagora, 6000, Bulgaria

    Stoitcho Metodiev

  9. Departamento de Zoologia/Antropologia da Faculdade de Ciências Praça Gomes Teixeira, Porto, 4099-002, Portugal

    Nuno Ferrand

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  1. Albano Beja-Pereira
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  2. Gordon Luikart
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  6. Giorgio Bertorelle
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  7. Andrew T Chamberlain
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  8. Telmo P Nunes
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  11. Georg Erhardt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Albano Beja-Pereira.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Beja-Pereira, A., Luikart, G., England, P. et al. Gene-culture coevolution between cattle milk protein genes and human lactase genes. Nat Genet 35, 311–313 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1263

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