David Reich has a summary of his lab's work up to October. Most of it is familiar; and you'll have to sit through his nice-Jewish-boy voice and mannerisms to get there (Heeb-to-Heeb, the man needs a voice-coach). For those who've read Reich, the new stuff picks up around 25 minutes or so.
One such: an HIV resistance gene. I recall mention of this gene in 2001. The gene was associated with survivors of the 14th-century AD Yersinia pestilence. Now, Reich's lab has tracked it to 5000 BC, north of the Caspian and traveling both sides of the Urals. This route became, later, the main byway of the historic Plague.
This region as of 5000 BC is Yamnaya Ground Zero. Given the cluster in the British Isles 1000 BC, I strongly suspect the gene was bourne by the Bell Beaker invaders in between.
I don't dismiss an HIVlike out of Africa before our nineteenth century. Also, genetic drift was a definite Thing in the sparsely-peopled early steppe. I do, however, wonder how this gene got selected for. One problem of course is that nobody's found HIV anywhere in Eurasia at this time. Although we may not have been looking yet.
It might also be that plague and HIV behave similarly. Plague kills when it sneaks past the immune system. HIV kills when it takes over the immune system. I'm so Generation X, I remember when they were still calling the latter a strain of the T-Cell Leukaemia.
Is this gene a hyperallergic reaction? A generally "hypochondriac" immune-system might identify both the bacterium and the virus, where a normal system might not.
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