The 14th-century global outbreak of bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, was the deadliest disease outbreak in recorded history, killing up to half of the European, Asian, and African populations. Among the scars left by this mass mortality event are those in the genomes of modern humans, including the prevalence of gene variants that may have protected against the causative bacterium Yersinia pestis but which today are associated with an increased risk of developing an autoimmune disease, according to a study published yesterday (October 19) in Nature.
The results show “how these studies on ancient DNA can help actually understand diseases even now,” Mihai Netea, an infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands who did not participate in the research, tells Science News. “And the trade-off is also very clear.”
For the study, University of Chicago population geneticist Luis Barreiro and his colleagues examined DNA ...
