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Ancestors` Cannibalism On Human Brains Revealed
New York, Apr 13: Our ancestors may have practiced cannibalism which in turn transferred genes to modern humans providing protection against brain ailments, a study has said.
New York, Apr 13: Our ancestors may have practiced cannibalism which in turn transferred genes to modern humans providing protection against brain ailments, a study has said.
The study has found genes that offer protection from brain diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), in populations on four continents, 'Nature' magazine reports.
This spread might be an evolutionary response to the dangers of cannibalism, the study said. Safeguarding DNA is most common among the fore people of Papua New Guinea. This is the legacy of the fore's custom of eating their dead relatives in funereal feasts.
However, cannibalism triggered an epidemic of a deadly brain disease called Kuru during the last century. "This is the signature of natural selection in a population where devastating recent epidemic occurred due to cannibalism," says team member Simon Mead of University College London.
Seeing the same signature in other parts of the world suggests that diseases may once have spread by the same route, he is quoted as saying by nature.
Kuru and CJD are thought to occur when distortion in prion proteins warp other healthy prions and clump together in the brain. About one in a million people develop CJD spontaneously. Others have caught it by eating infected tissue, as seems to have happened in the spread of mad cow disease causing variant CJD in humans, the study said.
It's thought that the fore caught Kuru around the turn of the twentieth century from eating a sufferer of spontaneous CJD, the researchers said.
Bureau Report
The study has found genes that offer protection from brain diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), in populations on four continents, 'Nature' magazine reports.
This spread might be an evolutionary response to the dangers of cannibalism, the study said. Safeguarding DNA is most common among the fore people of Papua New Guinea. This is the legacy of the fore's custom of eating their dead relatives in funereal feasts.
However, cannibalism triggered an epidemic of a deadly brain disease called Kuru during the last century. "This is the signature of natural selection in a population where devastating recent epidemic occurred due to cannibalism," says team member Simon Mead of University College London.
Seeing the same signature in other parts of the world suggests that diseases may once have spread by the same route, he is quoted as saying by nature.
Kuru and CJD are thought to occur when distortion in prion proteins warp other healthy prions and clump together in the brain. About one in a million people develop CJD spontaneously. Others have caught it by eating infected tissue, as seems to have happened in the spread of mad cow disease causing variant CJD in humans, the study said.
It's thought that the fore caught Kuru around the turn of the twentieth century from eating a sufferer of spontaneous CJD, the researchers said.
Bureau Report