Kendra Scheer led this study, now out in Nature Communications. Working with Tom Brutsaert, Abigail Bigham and colleagues in Peru, we found that Indigenous Andean populations carry unusually high amylase gene copy numbers, and that the increase appears to have happened quickly — consistent with adaptation to a starch-rich, potato-based diet. It pairs nicely with our earlier reconstruction of the amylase locus: the same stretch of the genome, but a much more recent chapter. Here is the paper.
The work was picked up by Reuters, Live Science and Archaeology Magazine, and Omer talked it through with the Naked Scientists.