Researchers at the Collège de France, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris-Cité and CNRS have traced the evolution of the human immune system back 10, ,000 years, thanks to a lengthy analysis of the variability in the genomes of over 2, ,800, individuals who lived in Europe over the last ten millennia.
Using paleogenomics, scientists were able to date most of the beneficial mutations in the fight against pathogens to the Bronze Age, 4 500 years ago. These mutations then rapidly increased in frequency in Europe. The scientists also found that mutations leading to an increased risk of developing inflammatory diseases increased in frequency over the last 10 000 lecture years. These enlightening results on the effects of natural selection on immunity genes are published in the journal Cell Genomics, 13 January 2023.
