Potatoes may have given Indigenous Andeans a digestive superpower
A study published in Nature Communications suggests that Indigenous Andean populations evolved a higher number of copies of the AMY1 gene to better digest starch from potatoes. This genetic adaptation likely occurred as potatoes became a dietary staple in the region thousands of years ago.
Why it matters
This research demonstrates how specific dietary pressures have shaped human genetic evolution over millennia.
For thousands of years, potatoes have been central to life in the Andes. Indigenous Andean communities were the first to domesticate the starch-rich crop, turning it into a dietary staple long before potatoes spread around the world. Now, researchers have found evidence that this ancient reliance on potatoes may also have shaped human evolution.
Indigenous people in Peru today carry more copies of a gene involved in starch digestion than any other known population. A new study co-led by researchers at UCLA and the University at Buffalo suggests that natural selection began favoring Indigenous Andeans with especially high numbers of the salivary amylase gene, known as AMY1 , around the same period that potatoes became established in the Andean highlands roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The findings were published recently in the journal Nature Communications .
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