Black Death shaped evolution of immunity genes, setting course for how we respond to disease today.

[Mindful]

An international team of scientists who analyzed centuries-old DNA from victims and survivors of the Black Death pandemic has identified key genetic differences that determined who lived and who died, and how those aspects of our immune systems have continued to evolve since that time.

Researchers from McMaster University, the University of Chicago, the Pasteur Institute and other organizations analyzed and identified genes that protected some against the devastating bubonic plague pandemic that swept through Europe, Asia and Africa nearly 700 years ago. Their study has been published in the journal Nature.

The same genes that once conferred protection against the Black Death are today associated with an increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis, the researchers report.

The team focused on a 100-year window before, during and after the Black Death, which reached London in the mid-1300s. It remains the single greatest human mortality event in recorded history, killing upwards of 50 per cent of the people in what were then some of the most densely populated parts of the world.

Black Death shaped evolution of immunity genes, setting course for how we respond to disease today

An international team of researchers analyzed centuries-old DNA from victims and survivors of the Black Death pandemic, identifying key genetic differences that determined who lived and who died, and how those aspects of our immune systems have continued to evolve since that time.

brighterworld.mcmaster.ca

 

[jwoodie]

Nature is not a scientific publication (not that it matters that much nowadays), and the conclusions it reports are entirely without a scientific basis. Genes do not "evolve" by themselves, and no evidence was presented that the descendants of people who survived the Black Death are any more likely to develop autoimmune diseases than the descendants of those who did not. Even if they did, it still would have been a pretty good tradeoff.

 

[badger2]

Nature is not a scientific publication (not that it matters that much nowadays), and the conclusions it reports are entirely without a scientific basis. Genes do not "evolve" by themselves, and no evidence was presented that the descendants of people who survived the Black Death are any more likely to develop autoimmune diseases than the descendants of those who did not. Even if they did, it still would have been a pretty good tradeoff.

Well, that's just the problematic. We're not ready to dismiss descendants, otherwise throwing the baby out with the bathwater in failing to decipher the evolution of coronavirus genes, in particular, the RGD motif on the spike protein of SARS2:

Harvard Medical School / Dept. Pediatrics, Massachusetts General Hospital

αv Integrin expression by DCs is required for Th17 cell differentiation and development of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in mice - PubMed

Th17 cells are a distinct lineage of T helper cells that protect the body from bacterial and fungal infection. However, Th17 cells also contribute to inflammatory and autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Th17 cell generation requires exposure of naive T cells to the cytokine TGF-β in...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

'....Furthermore, pharmacologic inhibition of alpha v integrins using cyclic RGD peptides blocked TGF-beta activation and TH17 cell generation in vitro and protected mice from EAE (autoimmune encephalomyelitis).'

So mRNA "vaccine" makers have a problem. Does the RGD motif occur in the "vaccines"? If not, why was it taken out?

 

[badger2]

Obviously, DeSantis 2024.