The activity and expression of adenylosuccinate lyase were reduced during modern human evolution, affecting brain and behavior

Ju, Xiang-Chun, Lee, Shin-Yu, Ågren, Richard, Machado, Luiz Carlos, Xing, Jiawei, Azama, Chika, Roy, Michael C, Endo, Toshihiro, Huttner, Wieland, Siepel, Adam, Fukunaga, Izumi, Zeberg, Hugo, Pääbo, Svante (August 2025) 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, 122 (32). e2508540122. ISSN 0027-8424 (Public Dataset)

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Abstract

Adenylosuccinate lyase (ADSL), an enzyme that is crucial for purine biosynthesis, carries an amino acid substitution that is present in almost all humans today but absent in Neandertals and Denisovans. This substitution reduces the stability of the enzyme, but what functional consequences it has are unknown. Here, we show that when introduced into mice, this substitution causes substrates of the enzyme to accumulate in amounts that correlate negatively with ADSL expression levels. In the brain, where the expression of the enzyme is low, the substitution results in particularly high substrate levels. When the behavior of the mice is analyzed, female mice expressing the modern human-like version of ADSL access water more efficiently for drinking than their wild-type littermates. In addition to the amino acid substitution, a haplotype in the ADSL gene occurs at a carrier frequency of >97% in present-day humans and exhibits evidence of positive selection. It is associated with less ADSL expression as well as with increased concentrations of succinyladenosine, one of the substrates of the enzyme, in cerebrospinal fluid. Thus, two genetic changes have reduced ADSL activity in human tissues since modern and archaic humans separated, affecting purine biosynthesis, particularly in the brain.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: organism description > animal
organism description > animal behavior
organism description > animal > mammal > primates > hominids
organism description > animal > mammal > primates > hominids > human
organism description > animal > mammal
organism description > animal > mammal > primates
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Siepel lab
SWORD Depositor: CSHL Elements
Depositing User: CSHL Elements
Date: 12 August 2025
Date Deposited: 07 Aug 2025 12:23
Last Modified: 07 Aug 2025 12:23
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Dataset ID:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/41930

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