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Changing Circumstances and Diets
Published in Christopher Cumo, Ancestral Diets and Nutrition, 2020
Food-acquisition strategies may be studied from an evolutionary perspective. Although all life shares a common ancestry, evolution has produced too many species to permit global treatment. An apt starting point is our order, the primates, whose hallmarks include possession of nails rather than claws and flexible hands and feet capable of grasping objects like branches, an adaptation to arboreal life. Primates have large heads relative to the body. The skull houses a sizable brain, prompting the inference that primates are intelligent. Primate behaviors appear to corroborate this notion. Nevertheless, the study of intelligence is inexact because this trait is not easy to quantify even among humans. Primates tend to be helpless as newborns because their large brain is immature at birth, necessitating parental care. Intelligence and parent–child bonds facilitate sociability. Primate eyes are close together, permitting binocular vision. Relative to other animals, especially insects, primates live long lives. A person may surpass a century, though such longevity is uncommon. Being mammals, primates have fur (hair) rather than scales or feathers, though humans have less than other primates.
The Genetics of Alzheimer Disease:
Published in Robert E. Becker, Ezio Giacobini, Alzheimer Disease, 2020
Schellenberg et al. (1988) studied linkage in five families in which AD was transmitted over several generations in a manner consistent with an autosomal dominant pattern. More general findings were reported previously by Bird et al. (1988). AD was not linked to chromosome 21 markers in this group. This suggests the existence of an AD gene which is not on chromosome 21 at least in these families. Interestingly, the families all derived from a geographically and genetically isolated group of Volga Germans. This suggests that their disease may have derived from one common ancestor, a so-called “founder effect”. AD would most likely represent a genetically homogenous disease in this group.
Raw veganism
Published in Carlo Alvaro, Raw Veganism, 2020
Out of all the species of animals, humans are the only species that cooks their food—and the only ones who suffer from obesity, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and more. Humans are primates. Biped beings were around over four million years ago, though large and more complex brains, language, and technological abilities developed much later, mainly during the past 100,000–200,000 years. Physical and genetic similarities indicate that Homo sapiens is closely related to the great apes. Humans and the great apes have a common ancestor that lived between eight and six million years ago. According to fossil records, humans first evolved in Africa between six and two million years ago. Homo erectus emerged about 1.8 million years ago, and Homo sapiens evolved 300,000 years ago in Africa.4 Yet, the practice of cooking started 20,000 years ago.5 Presumably, in that period humans prevalently consumed raw fruits and tender leafy greens. This is a very speculative area or research because it concerns a period of time so remote that it precludes researchers from clearly understanding what was in fact the case. However, using common sense, it is clear that prior to fire control and any sort of technology, humans ate fruits and tender leafy greens, and perhaps some insects.
Longitudinal phenotypic study of late-onset retinal degeneration due to a founder variant c.562C>A p.(Pro188Thr) in the C1QTNF5 gene
Published in Ophthalmic Genetics, 2021
Julie De Zaeytijd, Frauke Coppieters, Marieke De Bruyne, Jasper Van Royen, Dimitri Roels, Rani Six, Caroline Van Cauwenbergh, Elfride De Baere, Bart P. Leroy
Twenty-six family members were included in the study, initially presenting as part of three seemingly unrelated families. In 25 family members, a diagnosis of L-ORD was molecularly confirmed. Patient V5 with an L-ORD phenotype was deceased prior to DNA-analysis. In each family, sequencing of the coding region of the C1QTNF5 gene identified the c.562C>A p.(Pro188Thr) variant in a clinically affected individual. Thereafter, molecular analysis of the variant proved segregation with disease in others. To establish an unequivocal relationship between the presence of the mutation and a clinical phenotype of L-ORD and to exclude the possibility of non-penetrance of the variant, a sub-analysis of all family members above the age of 40 revealed the presence of the variant in 20 clinically affected individuals and the absence of the variant in 10 clinically unaffected family members. This proved that the variant c.562C>A p.(Pro188Thr) in C1QTNF5 was the causal mutation and confirmed L-ORD to be a 100% penetrant disease. Additional testing revealed the presence of this variant in six asymptomatic and clinically unaffected individuals. All family members were descended from ancestors from a formerly geographically and thus genetically isolated area in Belgium. Therefore, a common ancestry was suspected. SNP-based haplotyping in four heterozygous individuals, distantly related, revealed a common haplotype with a size of 9.7–11.4 Mb (Figure S1), and a genealogical investigation identified a common ancestor, rendering c.562C>A p.(Pro188Thr) a Belgian founder variant.
Genetic diversity of 15 autosomal STRs in a sample of Berbers from Aurès region in the Northeast of Algeria and genetic relationships with other neighbouring samples
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2020
Amine Abdeli, Traki Benhassine
Moreover, a genetic similarity was found among three Algerian Berber groups (Chaouis, Kabyles, and Mozabites). Although these groups represent different cultural and spoken dialects, there is no clear pattern of genetic differentiation between them. The absence of differentiation among these Berber groups was also noted using Alu insertion markers (Badache et al. 2019), and our data also failed to show any significant differentiation between groups according to their geographic regions (Northeast vs. South). These similarities indicate that our samples could share a common ancestor who was either autochthonous North African with gene flow from populations who have conquered or migrated in North Africa during prehistory and history, or who arrived in North Africa and then experienced gene flows from the surrounding regions.
CRISPR/Cas: from adaptive immune system in prokaryotes to therapeutic weapon against immune-related diseases
Published in International Reviews of Immunology, 2020
Juan Esteban Garcia-Robledo, María Claudia Barrera, Gabriel J. Tobón
All organisms are part of the three main branches of the tree of life, bacteria, archaea (prokaryotes), and eukaryotes, that split from a common Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) [2, 15]. Multicellular eukaryotes comprising most of kingdom Animalia emerged approximately 600 million years ago during the metazoan age [16]. These metazoan organisms branched rapidly along different lineages, and about 500 million years ago multiple lineages emerged [16]. Even simple life forms such as prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes possess heritable innate immune mechanisms [17]. Alternatively, adaptive immune systems able to provide protection based on previous exposure to foreign invaders was thought to first appear with the rise of jawed vertebrates (a metazoan lineage) [16, 18]. The adaptive immune system is based on cellular and humoral components (T cells and B lymphocytes, respectively) expressing antigen-recognizing receptors. These receptors are formed by genetic recombination during cell fate determination and maturation, allowing for the creation of multiple cell clones expressing receptors specific for different epitopes of microorganisms [18, 19].