Neanderthal Genes and Allergies
Can you imagine a cowboy working the Montana Territory with allergy problems? All that dust, animal hair, hay and such — may as well go back East. When you commence to sneezing, your immune system is trying to protect you. Sometimes it gets a mite overwrought and reacts to things that are not necessarily threats, and for some people it goes into hyperdrive with a severe allergic reaction. Where did this come from?
Scientists aren't exactly sure how allergies develop and what can be done about them. They do know that we have two types of immune systems, the innate and the adaptive. A study was done tracing some genes back to the Neanderthals, which were passed along when these "archaic" but fully-human people interbred with modern humans. However, there is no rational reason to think that genetic information came about through the random processes of evolution. Our immune system was created to do a job.
 |
| Image credit: David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Neanderthals are getting the rap for our allergies. Or rather the early modern humans who mixed with them are.To read the rest, click on "Is Your Allergy-Prone Immune System the Result of Neanderthal Influence?" Don't laugh, 'snot funny.
Recent data suggests that modern Eurasians inherited 1%–6% of their genomes from extinct people groups like Neanderthals and Denisovans. Are those genes a blessing or a curse? Two separate teams of scientists, led by Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Lluis Quintana-Murci of the Pasteur Institute, have found that three of the genes that control our immune system’s first line of defense bear a significant footprint from our archaic human cousins.