ArticleeLife2021
Reduced purine biosynthesis in humans after their divergence from Neandertals.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ancient DNA and Human Physiology.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Review
- A Role for Astrocyte Metabolism in Species-Specific Neuronal Development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The activity and expression of adenylosuccinate lyase were reduced during modern human evolution, affecting brain and behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Muscle AMP deaminase activity was lower in Neandertals than in modern humans.Nature communications · 2025Article
- DCHS1 Modulates Forebrain Proportions in Modern Humans via a Glycosylation Change.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A humanized NOVA1 splicing factor alters mouse vocal communications.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Evolution is in the details: Regulatory differences in modern human and Neanderthal.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- Uric acid and alterations of purine recycling disorders in Parkinson's disease: a cross-sectional study.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2024Article
- A multi-layered integrative analysis reveals a cholesterol metabolic program in outer radial glia with implications for human brain evolution.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- More than a decade of genetic research on the Denisovans.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Bipolar mania and epilepsy pathophysiology and treatment may converge in purine metabolism: A new perspective on available evidence.Neuropharmacology · 2023Review
- Human-specific genetics: new tools to explore the molecular and cellular basis of human evolution.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2023Review
- What made us "hunter-gatherers of words".Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Longer metaphase and fewer chromosome segregation errors in modern human than Neanderthal brain development.Science advances · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
26 authors at 10 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.