Do people with "Dukang Gene" really get drunk?
Reporter / Wang Liang
Core Tips On July 12th, a new research report released by the Center for Modern Anthropology at Fudan University said that an antidote gene, known as the “Dukang geneâ€, was found in most East Asians. What is the "Dukang Gene" in the end? How is it formed? Does it have a large amount of human alcohol? This reporter interviewed the discoverer of this gene, Li Hui, an associate professor at Fudan University.
2100 years ago, 70% of Chinese people have "Dukang gene"
Liaoning Daily: Prof. Li first congratulated you on your scientific research and achieved new results. In your article “diversification of the gene for alcohol dehydrogenase type B that occurs during modern human expansionâ€, most people in East Asia (including Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) have Genetic variants that help. "Wine culture" has a long history in China, and many readers are very interested in the topic of "wine". So, what kind of gene is your "Hypoxia Gene"?
Li Hui: To understand the role of this gene is not as good as the metaphor of a trip of wine in the human body.
Alcohol (chemical composition of ethanol) enters the human body and is first decomposed to acetaldehyde by the action of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). Acetaldehyde is harmful to the human body. At this time, another substance in the human body, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ADLH), is needed to catalyze acetaldehyde as acetic acid without carcinogenic effects. Acetic acid is an important raw material for metabolic reactions in the human body. It can be rapidly converted into energy by the human body and eventually decomposed into water and carbon dioxide. At this point, we drank the alcohol to complete its journey. The detoxification process of the human body to alcohol is completed.
In this process, the first occurrence of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) is controlled by the alcohol dehydrogenase gene, which is upstream in the human metabolic process and plays an important controlling role.
This gene not only accelerates the conversion of ethanol, but also has a lot to do with the conversion of a series of chemicals related to ethanol. These substances often appear in the storage of foods, and many of them belong to the scope of toxins. For example, foods are stored for a long time, and many similar toxins are produced after moldy and metamorphic and are degraded by alcohol dehydrogenase.
Liaoning Daily: We have this hangover gene in most of East Asians?
Li Hui: To be exact, most of the East Asians have functionally enhanced variants of this gene. There are seven variants of the alcohol dehydrogenase type B gene worldwide. Among them, the first four types of variants have appeared in people around the world, and the fifth variant only exists in Jews and a few Arabs. Although the fifth variant also had functional mutations, the detoxification capacity did not increase much. The seventh variant with stronger detoxification function was found only in East Asians. The study found that Chinese people have a large number of genetic variants of the seventh category, accounting for almost 70%, of which the highest distribution area is the Central Plains. Other people who do not have the seventh variant may have the third, fourth and sixth variants. Their resistance to alcoholism is relatively poor. Because the age of this gene variant coincides with the time of the historical story of "Dukang Brewing," it is called "Dukang Gene."
Liaoning Daily: Can you tell us about how the "Dukang Gene" was produced?
Li Hui: OK. We know that the gene itself is spontaneous, internal, and accidental. Gene mutations are generally mutated when the gene has gone wrong in the process of reproduction. Most of these “mistakes†are neutral, but some are harmful and can be Eliminated, some are beneficial, will be retained under special conditions, and spread, grow, and people with such beneficial genotypes in the crowd will become more. The "Dukang gene" is an example of beneficial gene mutations being retained.
Long ago, it was not easy for humans to grow enough food to eat, and there was very little leftover. In the two or three thousand years ago, East Asians represented by the Chinese people have made rapid progress in agricultural production. There has been a large amount of food surplus and accumulation, and food and wine production has also emerged. However, the early winemaking process was very rough, and people often accompanied some high-level toxins in the process of using fungal fermentation to produce alcohol. This caused the ancient people who did not have the means of detection and experience to have a tragedy of poisoning and death when drinking. The person who has a toxin gene that degrades wine in the body has an advantage in natural selection. We analyzed the natural selection of this gene and found that it is being selected by nature. The so-called positive selection has an advantage in survival, making this gene more capable of inheriting. The "Dukang gene" was formally produced during this period, specifically about 2,800 years ago.
Compared with Europeans and Americans, Chinese people’s hangover ability is indeed strong
Liaoning Daily: How did you determine the exact time when the "Dukang Gene" appeared?
Li Hui: We accidentally discovered this genetic variant when we investigated the tens of thousands of individual genes belonging to 46 human groups worldwide. Studies have shown that the chronological order and migration routes of all seven variants of the alcohol dehydrogenase B gene appear to follow humans’ DNA roadmap out of Africa (most current genetic evidence supports modern humans originating in Africa and across the world Diffusion and migration are exactly the same, all of which came from Africa 50,000 years ago and reached East Asia 20,000 years ago. The seventh type of variant that we mentioned appears about 2800 years ago.
In addition, we also have an ancient DNA laboratory, where specimens of bones unearthed from different archaeological regions dating from the earliest 23,000 years ago until the Qing Dynasty were preserved. Through the analysis of the DNA of the ancients, we found that there was almost no seventh variant in the Neolithic era dating back 5,000 years ago. By the Qin and Han dynasties more than 2,000 years ago, the proportion of the seventh variant appeared to have changed. It's very high. This shows that this gene has suddenly changed two or three thousand years ago.
Based on the mutual confirmation of the results of the genetic survey and the archaeological materials, we found that the time when the gene was changed coincided with the time when East Asians began to make large quantities of wine and drink alcohol. At this time, the gene of East Asians had a large-scale survival of the fittest.
Liaoning Daily: But we know that other people of the same age, such as Europeans and Americans, also drink alcohol. Why do they not have such a "Dukang gene"?
Li Hui: The history of drinking in other regions or countries is not as long as we are. For example, humans in the European region had long ago used hunter-gatherers to make a living. Agricultural production began to spread gradually from the Middle East to the interior of Europe 9,000 years ago. Until the Middle Ages, their food production was not very high, so there was very little wine produced from food. Although they also brewed wine through fruit, such as wine, but also wine, the substances contained in different wines produced by different plants are not the same. So they lack the same preconditions for natural selection as we do.
Liaoning Daily: If we drink the same amount of alcohol with Europeans and Americans, will the Chinese people's hangover ability be stronger than theirs? Not easy to get drunk?
Li Hui: There is a difference in the ability of hangover due to individual physical differences, and it is also related to the activity of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ADLH) in vivo. However, people with the "Dukang gene" are indeed more capable of detoxifying a large class of toxins such as alcohol.
"Dukang Gene" also needs to match the amount of alcohol to be really big
Liaoning Daily: Isn't it easy to get drunk if we have the "Dukang gene" in our bodies?
Li Hui: No. In fact, sometimes drunkenness is due to its existence.
Liaoning Daily: Why is this again?
Li Hui: We just mentioned that alcohol enters the body and it first changes from ethanol to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde becomes acetic acid. We know that alcoholism is mainly caused by acetaldehyde. The "Dukon" gene does indeed increase our ability to convert ethanol to acetaldehyde in the first step, but most of the East Asians have the ability to produce acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ADLH) during the conversion of acetaldehyde to acetic acid. Later, another gene mutation was missing. Currently, the ability of East Asians to produce acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ADLH) is only 1/8 that of other populations. This makes the last step faster and the next step slower. Instead, it causes the acetaldehyde to accumulate in the body and cannot be broken down, resulting in many negative effects, such as blushing on drinking alcohol. If acetaldehyde accumulates in the human body for a long time, it may even cause harm to many organs.
Liaoning Daily: That is to say, only people who have both high-efficiency alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase in their bodies will be better?
Li Hui: Yes. Although alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ADLH) sound similar in name, the genes that control them are on two different chromosomes, so the inheritance is not transmitted simultaneously. A small number of people also have efficient variants of these two genes. For most people, the "Dukang Gene" can only solve part of the problem, but wine is always more harmful than beneficial.
Liaoning Daily: How much stronger is the detoxification ability of people who have the "Dukang gene" compared to those who lack it?
Li Hui: This involves a lot of parameters, such as what kind of wine to drink, how much concentration, how fast to drink, etc., and there are more or less differences in different human bodies, we have roughly calculated, People with "Dukang Gene" have 12 times more potency than those who do not have this gene.
Liaoning Daily: In the daily life of modern society, people will inevitably have to drink and socialize. Can we develop genetic drugs to help people solve the problems encountered?
Li Hui: It should be possible. About 10% of alcohol entering the body is excreted in the original form by the respiratory tract, urine, and sweat, and the remaining 90% are metabolized by the participation of alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. If these two enzymes are lacking, we can increase the secretion concentration of these two enzymes through gene medicine, or increase the metabolism rate by supplementing their quantity. Of course, the drinker also increases. However, even if they take the gene medicines containing these two enzymes, it will take some time for them to react with alcohol in the human body, and this will still cause harm to the human body. So we still have to advocate that people drink less or not drink alcohol.
Expert Profile
Li Hui Assistant Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor of the Key Laboratory of Modern Anthropology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University. The main research directions: Human biology, including genetic diversity of human population, co-evolution of genetic environment and disease, and genetic association of human morphological characteristics; historical anthropology, through the cross-research of molecular anthropology and historical archaeology National formation process.
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