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Ancient DNA reveals origins of multiple sclerosis in Europe
Nature ^ | January, 10 2024 | Sara Reardon

Posted on 01/13/2024 4:26:21 AM PST by SunkenCiv

...The genomes suggest that many characteristics — including a heightened risk for multiple sclerosis — were carried to Europe by people who migrated to the continent in three distinct waves starting around 45,000 years ago...

The findings provide evidence that some of the regional variation in certain traits was caused by differences in migrants' dispersal patterns. That contradicts the idea that genetic differences arose mainly as people adapted to conditions in specific locations in Europe...

Europe was settled by anatomically modern humans in three main waves: hunter-gatherers reached Europe from Asia around 45,000 years ago; farmers arrived from the Middle East 11,000 years ago; and pastoralists — animal herders — came from the steppes of western Asia and eastern Europe 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists and historians had assumed that these groups mixed with one another throughout the continent, and that populations in particular places evolved distinct traits in response to their local environments...

But when geneticist Eske Willerslev at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his team began investigating the ancient-human genomes, they found that that wasn't the full story. The researchers collected and sequenced DNA from 317 ancient skeletons found in Europe, most of which were between 3,000 and 11,000 years old1. They then combined these sequences with existing genomic data from more than 1,300 other ancient Eurasians...

The study helped to solve questions such as why human adults evolved the ability to digest milk before Europeans herded animals. Mutations near the gene encoding lactase, the enzyme that allows babies to process milk, could have helped early humans to survive famines even before the arrival of the pastoralists. These mutations might have primed the genome for development of the variant that allows lactase to continue to function in adults.

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: genealogy; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; multipleschlerosis
Scientists crack mystery of how MS gene spread | 10th January 2024, 11:09 EST | Philippa Roxby | BBC

1 posted on 01/13/2024 4:26:21 AM PST by SunkenCiv
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The DNA of Denmark's Porsmose Man, pierced by arrows around 2600 B.C.E., came mostly from early farmers, not the herders arriving from the east.
Danish National Museum
Danish National Museum

2 posted on 01/13/2024 4:26:37 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...

3 posted on 01/13/2024 4:27:20 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

You can’t Maykop this stuff.


4 posted on 01/13/2024 4:32:01 AM PST by Sirius Lee (Next week on The Bickersons...)
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To: SunkenCiv

Imagine all of the diseases that we held in check, that are pouring across our southern border.

If I was an enemy of America, I would consider infecting hundreds of fanatics and drop them off at a border crossing.

Probably already happened.


5 posted on 01/13/2024 4:37:38 AM PST by airborne (Thank you Rush for helping me find FreeRepublic! )
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To: airborne

They should track the stupidity gene. How does it multiply fo fast in first world countries? Is that where third world countries came from?


6 posted on 01/13/2024 6:40:33 AM PST by If You Want It Fixed - Fix It ( )
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To: SunkenCiv
Curiously, Multiple Sclerosis in the USA has a strong relationship to Latitude.

The further north you go, the more cases of MS.

I do not know if that statistic occurs globally, or not.

My female cousin, born and raised in northern Michigan, died from exceptionally aggressive MS in the 1980s. She was a completely healthy young woman in her mid-thirties. Three years after diagnosis, she was dead. She literally had the best MS care in the world at that time at the Mayo Clinic.

Today, MS medications have improved so much that almost no one dies from it anymore, and many MS victims are able to lead an almost completely normal life.

7 posted on 01/13/2024 7:13:49 AM PST by zeestephen (Trump "Lost" By 43,000 Votes - Spread Across Three States - GA, WI, AZ)
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To: zeestephen

I suspect that the mechanism which enables the genetic variability cited with these migrations involves the susceptibility to prion replication, and that is responsible for the increased incidence of MS and Alzheimer’s disease. UC San Francisco researchers have associated Alzheimer’s disease with attack by two successive prions. I suspect that, if researched, MS would go a similar route, especially since MS is autoimmune. The human immune system attacks things which it recognizes as foreign.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/05/414326/alzheimers-disease-double-prion-disorder-study-shows

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2001/08/97139/ucsf-study-finds-two-old-drugs-may-help-fight-prion-diseases


8 posted on 01/13/2024 8:16:08 AM PST by nagant
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To: nagant
Thanks for the UCSF links.

Plain English explanations of disease are often very hard to find.

I am hopeful that medical AI and re-purposed drugs will speed up the decades of research and testing that are now required to move medical treatments forward, at a glacial pace.

9 posted on 01/13/2024 12:52:43 PM PST by zeestephen (Trump "Lost" By 43,000 Votes - Spread Across Three States - GA, WI, AZ)
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To: zeestephen

I certainly cant say that it doesnt.

There may be something to it but not necessarily in the way you exactly meant.

Looking at the patterns of country of origin and settlement in the US shows that to a degree different Europeans settled at different latitudes in the US. For example, Germans settlement was and is to this day most prominent starting in Eastern Pennsylvania and runs in a band westward and up into Michigan and Wisconsin while English and Scots tended to be further South.

The latitude relationship, if it does exist, may have been transferred from Europe and still exist while becoming mixed and muddled due to the inter-settlement of pockets of different peoples here in the US.

So that study would almost have to start in Europe and work back from there to see if it was related to genetics rather than latitude.


10 posted on 01/19/2024 4:27:41 PM PST by gnarledmaw (Hivemind liberals worship leaders, sovereign conservatives select servants.)
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