Human Gene Mutation Creates Resistance to A Rare, Violent Epidemic (Today's Most Popular)

"It's absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic. The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable."

Professor John Collinge, Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Prion Unit

A community in Papua New Guinea that suffered a major epidemic of a fatal brain disease called kuru has developed strong genetic resistance to the disease, according to new research by Medical Research Council scientists.

Kuru is a fatal prion disease geographically unique to an area in Papua New Guinea. In the mid 20th Century, an epidemic of kuru devastated a population in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The infection was passed on at funeral feasts, where mainly women and children consumed their deceased relatives as a mark of respect and mourning -a practice banned and ceased in the late 1950s.

Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies belong to group of fatal progressive conditions that affect the nervous system in humans and animals. In humans, prion diseases impair brain function, causing memory changes, personality changes, a decline in intellectual function (dementia), and problems with movement that worsen over time.

Scientists from the MRC Prion Unit, a national centre of excellence in prion diseases, assessed over 3000 people from the affected and surrounding Eastern Highland populations, including 709 who had participated in cannibalistic burial feasts, 152 of whom subsequently died of kuru. They discovered a novel and unique variation in the prion protein gene called G127V in people from the Purosa valley region where kuru was most rife.

This gene mutation, which is found nowhere else in the world, seems to offer high or even complete protection against the development of kuru and has become frequent in this area through natural selection over recent history, in direct response to the epidemic. This is thought be one the strongest examples ever of recent natural selection in humans.

The study, which began in 1996, is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Jason McManus

Source:  Medical Research Council (UK)

Comments

[Bob Greenwade]

Three thoughts come to my mind, relative to this.

1) Over the years I've heard from people insisting that it takes millennia for wide-scale differences to show up, creating the different races we see in humanity. This story, and the related one we've seen on here about thin-air breathers in Tibet, strongly indicate that such things can happen in a much shorter time.

2) People with a prion immunity can be a great benefit to the rest of the world, where such a thing can help in dealing with other prion-based diseases, most notably Mad Cow disease. I hope the appropriate researchers are all over that.

3) Anyone who has read the book "Zombie CSU" can probably relate my second line of thought with it, and come up with my third. (Anyone who hasn't read it is probably wondering what prions could possibly have to do with a zombie apocalypse... well, you'd have to read the book.)

[Kallex Wolf]

" spongiform encephalopathies", rots the brain into a sponge like tissue devoid of neurons. If they are immune to it and if they can become zombies they could be brain eating zombies if they decide to become cannibalistic again.

[Shades]

One small downside to this story and it's hopeful research fight against future colonies of zombies... AIDS/HIV runs rampant in this country; in every tribe, every community. Perhaps in 50-100 yrs they will also be the key genome in prevention of HIV infected zombies?!