RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Evolution of cytokine production capacity in ancient and modern European populations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.01.14.426690
DO 10.1101/2021.01.14.426690
A1 Domínguez-Andrés, Jorge
A1 Kuijpers, Yunus
A1 Bakker, Olivier B.
A1 Jaeger, Martin
A1 Xu, Cheng-Jian
A1 van der Meer, Jos W.M.
A1 Jakobsson, Mattias
A1 Bertranpetit, Jaume
A1 Joosten, Leo A.B.
A1 Li, Yang
A1 Netea, Mihai G.
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/17/2021.01.14.426690.abstract
AB As our ancestors migrated throughout the different continents, natural selection increased the presence of alleles advantageous in the new environments. Heritable variations that alter the susceptibility to diseases vary with the historical period, the virulence of the infections, and their geographical spread. In this study we built polygenic scores for heritable traits influencing the genetic adaptation in the production of cytokines and immune-mediated disorders, including infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases, and applied them to the genomes of several ancient European populations. We observed that the advent of the Neolithic was a turning point for immune-mediated traits in Europeans, favoring those alleles linked with the development of tolerance against intracellular pathogens and promoting inflammatory responses against extracellular microbes. These evolutionary patterns are also associated with an increased presence of traits related to inflammatory and auto-immune diseases.