Major Historic Lactose Tolerance Study Launched

With all the recent scientific attention - see my posts Dairying More Than 8000 Years Old and Genetic Map of Europe Features the Lactase Mutation - on the mutation that allows adults to drink milk without symptoms, the history of milking and milk drinking is becoming vital to the understanding of the spread of modern humans.

ScienceDaily reported that "In a major EU project, being launched today and coordinated by Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers will now study when and where this capacity emerged and what it entailed."

The researchers - 15 research teams with different specializations in genetics, organic chemistry, and archeology:

will follow the tracks of milk throughout Europe, making use of a model for the spread of genes in order to follow the dissemination of the mutation. In this model the frequency of the mutation increases along the 'frontline' of the dissemination¬-that is, we in Scandinavia, on the periphery, should thus have the highest frequency of the specific gene.

Fascinating stuff, even if we'll probably have to wait several years for the results of the research to start trickling in.