Reduced purine biosynthesis in humans after their divergence from Neandertals
Vita V. Stepanova, Kaja Ewa Moczulska, Guido N. Vacano, Ilia Kurochkin, Xiang-Chun Ju, Stephan Riesenberg, Dominik Macak, Tomislav Maričić, Linda Dombrowski, Maria Schörnig, Konstantinos Anastassiadis, O. K. Baker, Ronald Naumann, Ekaterina Khrameeva, Anna Vanushkina, Elena Stekolshchikova, Alina Egorova, Anna Tkachev, Randall C. Mazzarino, Nathan Duval, Dmitri Zubkov, Patrick Giavalisco, Terry G. Wilkinson, David Patterson, Philipp Khaitovich, Svante Pääbo
Abstract
We analyze the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney and three different regions of the brain. Although several compounds in amino acid metabolism occur at either higher or lower concentrations in humans than in the other primates, metabolites downstream of adenylosuccinate lyase, which catalyzes two reactions in purine synthesis, occur at lower concentrations in humans. This enzyme carries an amino acid substitution that is present in all humans today but absent in Neandertals. By introducing the modern human substitution into the genomes of mice, as well as the ancestral, Neandertal-like substitution into the genomes of human cells, we show that this amino acid substitution contributes to much or all of the reduction of de novo synthesis of purines in humans.