A group of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Waterloo have uncovered a surprising genetic link between height, arthritis, and the Out of Africa migration between 50,000 and 130,000 years ago.
A common mutation in a gene called GDF5, present in billions of people today, may have provided our ancestors with an evolutionary advantage against the extreme cold of the ice age by making us shorter. Unfortunately, the same gene responsible for shortening our limbs to conserve heat and protect us from frostbite is also associated with an increased risk for osteoarthritis.
Andrew Doxey and his colleagues added a new dimension to the study (published in Nature Genetics) by globally mapping the proportion of the population containing the GDF5 variant that makes humans shorter.