Parasite Drove Natural Selection in Amazonian Indigenous Groups

The findings could help researchers understand why some individuals are more vulnerable to deadly Chagas disease.

Written byNatalia Mesa, PhD

| 4 min read

Fluorescent image of red cells with high and low levels of parasitic infection in green

The parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (green) readily infected stem cell–derived heart cells (left) but struggled when the cells were engineered to lack the PPP3CA gene (right).

Image credit:COUTO-SILVA ET AL., SCIENCE ADVANCES

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Diseases have the potential to shape human evolution, leaving an indelible mark on the genetic code of generations to come. And that’s exactly what happened in South America, finds a study published March 8 in Science Advances. Based on genome datasets spanning two decades, researchers concluded that Chagas disease, a deadly tropical disease caused by a parasite, drove a strong pulse of natural selection in the Amazon roughly seven thousand years ago—the first documented example of pathogen-driven natural selection in the Americas. As a result, many Amazonian Indigenous people alive today carry mutations that protect them from Chagas disease.

“I think this is a fascinating paper,” John Lindo, an anthropologist at Emory College in Georgia, writes in an email to The Scientist. “The findings make tremendous sense, since there is a high mortality rate associated with the Chagas disease, thereby causing a very strong selection pressure.”

Tábita Hünemeier, a population ...

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Fluorescent images of red cells showing high and low levels of infection in green

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Meet the Author

Natalia Mesa, PhD
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As she was completing her graduate thesis on the neuroscience of vision, Natalia found that she loved to talk to other people about how science impacts them. This passion led Natalia to take up writing and science communication, and she has contributed to outlets including Scientific American and the Broad Institute. Natalia completed her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Washington and graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences. She was previously an intern at The Scientist, and currently freelances from her home in Seattle.
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