Free Access
ANCIENT URBANIZATION PREDICTS GENETIC RESISTANCE TO TUBERCULOSIS
Abstract
A link between urban living and disease is seen in recent and historical records, but the presence of this association in prehistory has been difficult to assess. If the transition to urban living does result in an increase in disease‐based mortality, we might expect to see evidence of increased disease resistance in longer‐term urbanized populations, as the result of natural selection. To test this, we determined the frequency of an allele (SLC11A1 1729 + 55del4) associated with natural resistance to intracellular pathogens such as tuberculosis and leprosy. We found a highly significantly correlation with duration of urban settlement—populations with a long history of living in towns are better adapted to resisting these infections. This correlation remains strong when we correct for autocorrelation in allele frequencies due to shared population history. Our results therefore support the interpretation that infectious disease loads became an increasingly important cause of human mortality after the advent of urbanization, highlighting the importance of population density in determining human health and the genetic structure of human populations.
Citing Literature
Number of times cited: 38
- Charlotte A. Roberts and Megan Brickley, INFECTIOUS AND METABOLIC DISEASES, Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, (415-446), (2018).
- Rémi Barbiéri and Michel Drancourt, Paléomicrobiologie de la tuberculose, Revue Francophone des Laboratoires, 2017, 496, (40), (2017).
- Magda Lewandowska, Krystyna Jędrychowska-Dańska, Alicja Zamerska, Tomasz Płoszaj and Henryk W. Witas, The genetic profile of susceptibility to infectious diseases in Roman-Period populations from Central Poland, Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 47, (1), (2017).
- Vikas K. Saket,, R. Kachhi and P. Singh, Tuberculosis in Animals and Humans: Evolution of Diagnostics and Therapy, Asian Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 12, 4, (177), (2017).
- Marc T. J. Johnson and Jason Munshi-South, Evolution of life in urban environments, Science, 10.1126/science.aam8327, 358, 6363, (eaam8327), (2017).
- Daniela Brites and Sebastien Gagneux, The Nature and Evolution of Genomic Diversity in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex, Strain Variation in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex: Its Role in Biology, Epidemiology and Control, 10.1007/978-3-319-64371-7_1, (1-26), (2017).
- E. Broset and J. Gonzalo-Asensio, Adaptive Evolution of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex to Different Hosts, Genetics and Evolution of Infectious Diseases, 10.1016/B978-0-12-799942-5.00023-8, (529-552), (2017).
- Helen D. Donoghue, Insights gained from ancient biomolecules into past and present tuberculosis—a personal perspective, International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 56, (176), (2017).
- Johannes W. Fedderke, Robert E. Klitgaard and Valerio Napolioni, Genetic adaptation to historical pathogen burdens, Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 10.1016/j.meegid.2017.07.017, 54, (299-307), (2017).
- Rebecca H. Chisholm, James M. Trauer, Darren Curnoe and Mark M. Tanaka, Controlled fire use in early humans might have triggered the evolutionary emergence of tuberculosis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 32, (9051), (2016).
- Ralph A Catalano, Katherine B Saxton, Alison Gemmill and Terry Hartig, Twinning in Norway Following the Oslo Massacre: Evidence of a ‘Bruce Effect’ in Humans, Twin Research and Human Genetics, 19, 05, (485), (2016).
- Sharon N. DeWitte, Archaeological Evidence of Epidemics Can Inform Future Epidemics, Annual Review of Anthropology, 45, 1, (63), (2016).
- Zuzana Bayerova, Eva Janova, Jan Matiasovic, Ludovic Orlando and Petr Horin, Positive selection in the SLC11A1 gene in the family Equidae, Immunogenetics, 68, 5, (353), (2016).
- Stephen Shennan, Demography and Cultural Evolution, Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, (1-14), (2015).
- Christina Warinner, Camilla Speller, Matthew J. Collins and Cecil M. Lewis, Ancient human microbiomes, Journal of Human Evolution, 79, (125), (2015).
- João P. P. Rosa, Altay A. L. de Souza, Giscard H. O. de Lima, Dayane F. Rodrigues, Valdir de Aquino Lemos, Eduardo da Silva Alves, Sergio Tufik and Marco T. de Mello, Motivational and evolutionary aspects of a physical exercise training program: a longitudinal study, Frontiers in Psychology, 6, (2015).
- H. W. Witas, H. D. Donoghue, D. Kubiak, M. Lewandowska and J. J. Gładykowska-Rzeczycka, Molecular studies on ancient M. tuberculosis and M. leprae: methods of pathogen and host DNA analysis, European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, 10.1007/s10096-015-2427-5, 34, 9, (1733-1749), (2015).
- Pascale Perrin, Human and tuberculosis co-evolution: An integrative view, Tuberculosis, 95, (S112), (2015).
- Mark Spigelman, Helen D. Donoghue, Ziad Abdeen, Suheir Ereqat, Issa Sarie, Charles L. Greenblatt, Ildikó Pap, Ildikó Szikossy, Israel Hershkovitz, Gila Kahila Bar-Gal and Carney Matheson, Evolutionary changes in the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the human genome from 9000 years BP until modern times, Tuberculosis, 10.1016/j.tube.2015.02.022, 95, (S145-S149), (2015).
- Helen D. Donoghue, Mark Spigelman, Justin O'Grady, Ildikó Szikossy, Ildikó Pap, Oona Y.-C. Lee, Houdini H.T. Wu, Gurdyal S. Besra and David E. Minnikin, Ancient DNA analysis – An established technique in charting the evolution of tuberculosis and leprosy, Tuberculosis, 95, (S140), (2015).
- C. Justin Cook, The Natural Selection of Infectious Disease Resistance and Its Effect on Contemporary Health, Review of Economics and Statistics, 97, 4, (742), (2015).
- Daniela Brites and Sebastien Gagneux, Co‐evolution of ycobacterium tuberculosis and omo sapiens, Immunological Reviews, 264, 1, (6-24), (2015).
- Carl‐Johan Dalgaard and Holger Strulik, OPTIMAL AGING AND DEATH: UNDERSTANDING THE PRESTON CURVE, Journal of the European Economic Association, 12, 3, (672-701), (2014).
- Yi Jiang, Li Wan, Zhijian Zhang, Haican Liu, Hui Pang, Wen Zhang, Xiuqin Zhao, Haiyin Wang, Guilian Li, Chen Chen, Biao Kan and Kanglin Wan, Conserved alanine rich protein Rv3878 in Mycobacterium tuberculosis contains sequence polymorphisms, Tuberculosis, 94, 3, (245), (2014).
- Keith W. Kintigh, Jeffrey H. Altschul, Mary C. Beaudry, Robert D. Drennan, Ann P. Kinzig, Timothy A. Kohler, W. Fredrick Limp, Herbert D. G. Maschner, William K. Michener, Timothy R. Pauketat, Peter Peregrine, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Tony J. Wilkinson, Henry T. Wright and Melinda A. Zeder, Grand Challenges for Archaeology, American Antiquity, 79, 01, (5), (2014).
- Gary M. King, Urban microbiomes and urban ecology: How do microbes in the built environment affect human sustainability in cities?, Journal of Microbiology, 52, 9, (721), (2014).
- Millie I Darling and Helen D Donoghue, Insights from paleomicrobiology into the indigenous peoples of pre-colonial America - A Review, Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, 10.1590/0074-0276140589, 109, 2, (131-139), (2014).
- Mathieu Cellier, Cell-Type Specific Determinants of NRAMP1 Expression in Professional Phagocytes, Biology, 2, 4, (233), (2013).
- Gwen Robbins Schug, K. Elaine Blevins, Brett Cox, Kelsey Gray, V. Mushrif-Tripathy and Michael D. Petraglia, Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Processes at the End of the Indus Civilization, PLoS ONE, 8, 12, (e84814), (2013).
- Iñaki Comas, Mireia Coscolla, Tao Luo, Sonia Borrell, Kathryn E Holt, Midori Kato-Maeda, Julian Parkhill, Bijaya Malla, Stefan Berg, Guy Thwaites, Dorothy Yeboah-Manu, Graham Bothamley, Jian Mei, Lanhai Wei, Stephen Bentley, Simon R Harris, Stefan Niemann, Roland Diel, Abraham Aseffa, Qian Gao, Douglas Young and Sebastien Gagneux, Out-of-Africa migration and Neolithic coexpansion of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with modern humans, Nature Genetics, 45, 10, (1176), (2013).
- Casper Worm Hansen, The diffusion of health technologies: Cultural and biological divergence, European Economic Review, 64, (21), (2013).
- Emanuele Strano, Vincenzo Nicosia, Vito Latora, Sergio Porta and Marc Barthélemy, Elementary processes governing the evolution of road networks, Scientific Reports, 2, 1, (2012).
- Mathieu F.M. Cellier, Nramp, Metal Transporters, 10.1016/B978-0-12-394390-3.00010-0, (249-293), (2012).
- Frédéric Thomas, Simon P. Daoust and Michel Raymond, Can we understand modern humans without considering pathogens?, Evolutionary Applications, 5, 4, (368), (2012).
- Daniela Brites and Sebastien Gagneux, Old and new selective pressures on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 12, 4, (678), (2012).
- H. D. Donoghue, Insights gained from palaeomicrobiology into ancient and modern tuberculosis, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 17, 6, (821-829), (2011).
- Johan J. Bolhuis, Gillian R. Brown, Robert C. Richardson and Kevin N. Laland, Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology, PLoS Biology, 9, 7, (e1001109), (2011).
- Iñaki Comas and Sebastien Gagneux, A role for systems epidemiology in tuberculosis research, Trends in Microbiology, 19, 10, (492), (2011).
