ANALYSIS – The study of 2,800 genomes over a period of 10,000 years has made it possible to identify protective genes against infectious diseases.
What would happen if a time traveler managed to reach the present from the distant past of several thousand years? Physically, it would be impossible to differentiate it from our contemporaries, but this individual would have little chance of surviving. And for good reason, it will not have benefited from the 10,000 years of natural selection that have shaped our genome and made us more resistant to disease. The Human Evolutionary Genetics team at the Institut Pasteur publishes in the journal Cell Genomics the results of the analysis of the genome of 2800 individuals and thus tells 10,000 years of evolution of our immune system.
“We are the descendants of those who survived past epidemics, explains Lluis Quintana-Murci, professor at the Collège de France and head of the team to whom we owe this work. This story shaped our genetic heritage and made us more resistant to certain diseases.” When a pathogen enters our body…
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