Comments on: Disease as a byproduct of adaptation

By: ResearchBlogging.org News » Blog Archive » Editor’s Selections: Relevance, Adaptive Disease, and Dimethylsulfide

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:08:28 +0000

[...] Gene Expression gives a lengthy consideration of how some human diseases may actually result from the a novel selective landscape. [...]

By: Disease a byproduct of adaptation? « Trinity: The Scientific Basis of Vitalism and Transcendentalism

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:20:38 +0000

[...] Click Here [...]

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:49:55 +0000

Why? Is it because gamiense isn’t a selection pressure? Or is there selection for lysing gambiense but the variants still can’t do so? I apologize if this was answered somewhere in the post.

i think there may be two reasons

1) it’s a new subspecies, so defenses haven’t evolved

2) there are variants which can lyse, but they are at very low frequency, and not picked up by N = 75. the initial set of in vitro were just plasma taken from people, so if there was a high frequency lysing variant it should have shown up

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:48:21 +0000

kele,

1) check out ‘evolutionary medicine.’ george williams has written some stuff on this

2) i don’t think europeans looked down on people, it was just an illness that public health officials became aware of (e.g., sending lots of milk to native american reservations resulted in the milk being thrown out)

3) the 12% figure is wrong in the generality. that’s for northern europeans. southern european groups have much lower lactase persistence rates. around 1/3 in tuscany, down to 1/10th in sicily

By: Kele

Kele — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:36:14 +0000

I like your phrasing of sickle cell anemia/malaria as "disease as a byproduct of adaptation." Interesting way of looking at things. Also, I try to use "lactase persistence" instead of "lactose intolerance" because the former does take into account the evolutionary history of the trait. Did Europeans ever look down on other peoples for their inability to digest lactose? Wikipedia (lactose intolerance) says 12% of Europeans do have lactose intolerance so maybe it wasn't an issue at all. I have a question about brucie gambiense: You said, "None [of the 75 samples] lysed brucie gambiense." Why? Is it because gamiense isn't a selection pressure? Or is there selection for lysing gambiense but the variants still can't do so? I apologize if this was answered somewhere in the post.

By: Tweets that mention Disease as a byproduct of adaptation | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine -- Topsy.com

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:29:17 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ron Simon, Lurino. Lurino said: Disease as a byproduct of adaptation | Gene Expression http://j.mp/bLEgqq [...]