Karin Broberg

Karin Broberg (born 6 January 1973) is a Swedish geneticist and toxicologist and professor at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, known for her work on human adaptation to challenging environments. Based on knowledge gained from expeditions to remote Andean plains with high arsenic in drinking waters, she observed that indigenous populations of Indians inhabiting these areas since thousands of years are naturally resistant to arsenic.[1][2], which is a highly toxic chemical. Arsenic tolerance was in resistant individuals found to be the result of allelic variation in the arsenic-3-methyl transferase (AS3MT) gene, the gene product of which detoxifies arsenic[3][4]. This was the first report on human genetic adaptation to a toxic environment and added to the list of very few examples of evolution of humans in historic time (e.g. lactose tolerance[5][6][7]). Her subsequent work has provided phylogenetic evidence that the AS3MT gene moved by horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to animals during their early evolution, and independently on several occasions to other eukaryotic phylae as well[8]. Horizontal gene transfer is distinct from vertical gene transfer from progeny to progeny, as such transfer of single genes as a means of obtaining new stably inherited trait has only rarely been reported in animals[9]

References
  1. Schläwicke Engström K, Broberg K, Concha G, Nermell B, Warholm M, Vahter M (2007) "Genetic polymorphisms influencing arsenic metabolism: evidence from Argentina." Environ Health Perspect 115:599-605.
  2. Engström K, Vahter M, Mlakar SJ, Concha G, Nermell B, Raqib R, Cardozo A, Broberg K (2011) "Polymorphisms in arsenic(+III oxidation state) methyltransferase (AS3MT) predict gene expression of AS3MT as well as arsenic metabolism." Environ Health Perspect 119:182-8.
  3. Schlebusch CM, Gattepaille LM, Engström K, Vahter M, Jakobsson M, Broberg K (2015) "Human adaptation to arsenic-rich environments." Mol Biol Evol 32:1544-55.
  4. Carl Zimmer (March 12, 2015) New York Times: "An Unlikely Driver of Evolution: Arsenic."
  5. Tishkoff SA, Reed FA, Ranciaro A, Voight BF, Babbitt CC, Silverman JS, Powell K, Mortensen HM, Hirbo JB, Osman M, Ibrahim M, Omar SA, Lema G, Nyambo TB, Ghori J, Bumpstead S, Pritchard JK, Wray GA, Deloukas P (2007) "Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe". Nat Genet 39:31-40.
  6. Creanza N, Feldman MW. (2016) "Worldwide genetic and cultural change in human evolution." Curr Opin Genet Dev 41:85-92.
  7. Fan S, Hansen ME, Lo Y, Tishkoff SA. (2016) "Going global by adapting local: A review of recent human adaptation." Science 354:54-59
  8. Palmgren M, Engström K, Hallström BM, Wahlberg K, Søndergaard DA, Säll T, Vahter M, Broberg K (2017) "AS3MT-mediated tolerance to arsenic evolved by multiple independent horizontal gene transfers from bacteria to eukaryotes." PLoS One 12:e0175422.
  9. Dunning Hotopp JC (2011) "Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria and animals." Trends Genet 27:157-63.
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