An international team of scientists who analyzed centuries-old DNA from victims and survivors of the Black Death pandemic has identified key genetic differences that determined who lived and who died, and how those aspects of our immune systems have continued to evolve since that time.

Researchers from McMaster University, the University of Chicago, the Pasteur Institute and other organizations analyzed and identified genes that protected some against the devastating bubonic plague pandemic that swept through Europe, Asia and Africa nearly 700 years ago. Their study has been published today in the journal Nature.

The same genes that once conferred protection against the Black Death are today associated with an increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis, the researchers report.

The team focused on a 100-year window before, during and after the Black Death, which reached London in the mid-1300s. It remains the single greatest human mortality event in recorded history, killing upwards of 50 per cent of the people in what were then some of the most densely populated parts of the world.

More than 500 ancient DNA samples were extracted and screened from the remains of individuals who had died before the plague, died from it or survived the Black Death in London, including individuals buried in the East Smithfield plague pits used for mass burials in 1348-9. Additional samples were taken from remains buried in five other locations across Denmark.

Scientists searched for signs of genetic adaptation related to the plague, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

They identified four genes that were under selection, all of which are involved in the production of proteins that defend our systems from invading pathogens and found that versions of those genes, called alleles, either protected or rendered one susceptible to plague.

Source: Read Full Article