Meeting report: 30th International Conference on Antiviral Research, in Atlanta, GA, USA

Vere Hodge, R Anthony

The CDHR3 Tyr 529 is the ancestral protein. Although a few mammals (e.g. horse and mouse) have CDHR3 His 529 , most mammals, and even some birds and reptiles, have Tyr 529 . All non-human primates are Tyr 529 . The early humans, Neanderthal and Denisovan, are thought to have diverged from the modern human lineage about 300,000 years ago. It is a remarkable achievement of recent scientific discovery that their DNA sequence is now known -they have the ancestral Tyr 529 protein. In contrast, the Cys 529 protein appears to be unique to our human race. However, the Cys 529 variant first appeared in modern humans a long time ago, being detected in some ancient modern human remains which were discovered in Africa. The dates showed that Cys 529 was already present within the human population before the 'out of Africa' event, around 50,000 years ago. 4 Incidentally, Otzi, the 5000-year-old 'Ice-man' found in the Alps, had the Tyr 529 protein.