Starchy Love

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For those who find it hard to resist bread or pasta, ancient genes might be to blame.

Two new studies found that genetic adaptations, which emerged around 800,000 years ago, primed humans to thrive on starchy foods long before the advent of farming.

Led by geneticists Omer Gokcumen at the University at Buffalo and Peter Sudmant at the University of California, Berkeley, the papers suggested that duplications of the AMY1 gene – responsible for producing the enzyme amylase that helps break down starch in the mouth – enabled early humans to efficiently process carbohydrates, giving them a crucial survival advantage.

In their paper, Gokcumen’s team found that early hunter-gatherers already had a range of AMY1 copies, averaging four to eight.

Analysis of ancient genomes – including a 45,000-year-old Siberian sample and even Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA – showed that early duplications of the gene helped our ancestors digest starch-rich plants before domesticated crops became widespread.

“The initial duplications in our genomes laid the groundwork for significant variation in the amylase region, allowing humans to adapt to shifting diets as starch consumption rose dramatically with the advent of new technologies and lifestyles,” Gokcumen explained in a statement.

Meanwhile, Sudmant’s team documented similar findings and found that the extra AMY1 copies likely arose in two main waves.

The first wave came several hundred thousand years ago, possibly when early humans began cooking, which helped release nutrients from starchy foods. The second wave followed the agricultural revolution, as societies began cultivating crops like wheat and potatoes.

With more AMY1 genes, ancient humans digested starch more efficiently, possibly giving them a survival edge. Sudmant told the New York Times that the amylase gene region is “both plastic and powerful,” offering unique insights into human evolution.

The authors believe that the findings could help better understand the role of the gene in health.

Gokcumen speculated that people with fewer genes might be more vulnerable to metabolic issues in modern, carb-rich diets, hinting that AMY1 could help guide new approaches to nutrition and metabolic health, including unlocking new treatments for diet-related diseases.