Researchers from Würzburg University Hospital (UKW), Homburg University Hospital (UKS), and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (MPI-EVA), all in Germany, have analyzed the DNA from a world-wide database of more than 10,000 ancient and modern humans to search for the origin of a mutation in the fatty liver gene PNPLA3 and to explain its strikingly high global presence today.