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Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome

Infectious diseases and epidemics have always accompanied and characterized human history, representing one of the main causes of death. Even today, despite progress in sanitation and medical research, infections are estimated to account for about 15% of deaths. The hypothesis whereby infectious dis...

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Autores principales: Cagliani, Rachele, Sironi, Manuela
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3603197/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23533945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/204240
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author Cagliani, Rachele
Sironi, Manuela
author_facet Cagliani, Rachele
Sironi, Manuela
author_sort Cagliani, Rachele
collection PubMed
description Infectious diseases and epidemics have always accompanied and characterized human history, representing one of the main causes of death. Even today, despite progress in sanitation and medical research, infections are estimated to account for about 15% of deaths. The hypothesis whereby infectious diseases have been acting as a powerful selective pressure was formulated long ago, but it was not until the availability of large-scale genetic data and the development of novel methods to study molecular evolution that we could assess how pervasively infectious agents have shaped human genetic diversity. Indeed, recent evidences indicated that among the diverse environmental factors that acted as selective pressures during the evolution of our species, pathogen load had the strongest influence. Beside the textbook example of the major histocompatibility complex, selection signatures left by pathogen-exerted pressure can be identified at several human loci, including genes not directly involved in immune response. In the future, high-throughput technologies and the availability of genetic data from different populations are likely to provide novel insights into the evolutionary relationships between the human host and its pathogens. Hopefully, this will help identify the genetic determinants modulating the susceptibility to infectious diseases and will translate into new treatment strategies.
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spelling pubmed-36031972013-03-26 Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome Cagliani, Rachele Sironi, Manuela Int J Evol Biol Review Article Infectious diseases and epidemics have always accompanied and characterized human history, representing one of the main causes of death. Even today, despite progress in sanitation and medical research, infections are estimated to account for about 15% of deaths. The hypothesis whereby infectious diseases have been acting as a powerful selective pressure was formulated long ago, but it was not until the availability of large-scale genetic data and the development of novel methods to study molecular evolution that we could assess how pervasively infectious agents have shaped human genetic diversity. Indeed, recent evidences indicated that among the diverse environmental factors that acted as selective pressures during the evolution of our species, pathogen load had the strongest influence. Beside the textbook example of the major histocompatibility complex, selection signatures left by pathogen-exerted pressure can be identified at several human loci, including genes not directly involved in immune response. In the future, high-throughput technologies and the availability of genetic data from different populations are likely to provide novel insights into the evolutionary relationships between the human host and its pathogens. Hopefully, this will help identify the genetic determinants modulating the susceptibility to infectious diseases and will translate into new treatment strategies. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013 2013-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3603197/ /pubmed/23533945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/204240 Text en Copyright © 2013 R. Cagliani and M. Sironi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review Article
Cagliani, Rachele
Sironi, Manuela
Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title_full Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title_fullStr Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title_full_unstemmed Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title_short Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome
title_sort pathogen-driven selection in the human genome
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3603197/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23533945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/204240
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