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When natural selection helps us fight viruses

What if a time traveler managed to reach the present several thousand years from the distant past? It would be physically indistinguishable from our contemporaries, but this individual would have little chance of survival. And for good reason, it won’t benefit from 10,000 years of natural selection that has shaped our genome and made us more resistant to disease. The human evolutionary genetics team at the Institut Pasteur publishes in the journal Cellular Genomics The results of the genome analysis of 2,800 individuals and thus tell the story of 10,000 years of evolution of our immune system.

“We are the descendants of those who survived past epidemics, explains Luis Quintana-Mursi, professor at the Collège de France and leader of the team to whom we owe this work. This history shaped our genetic heritage and made us more resistant to certain diseases.” When the pathogen enters our body…

Source: Le Figaro

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