Kerner Gaspard, Patin Etienne, Quintana-Murci Lluis
Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Institut Pasteur, UMR 2000, CNRS, Paris 75015, France.
Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Institut Pasteur, UMR 2000, CNRS, Paris 75015, France; Chair Human Genomics and Evolution, Collège de France, Paris 75005, France.
Curr Opin Immunol. 2021 Oct;72:116-125. doi: 10.1016/j.coi.2021.04.006. Epub 2021 May 13.
Population genetic studies have clearly indicated that immunity and host defense are among the functions most frequently subject to natural selection, and increased our understanding of the biological relevance of the corresponding genes and their contribution to variable immune traits and diseases. Herein, we will focus on some recently studied forms of human adaptation to infectious agents, including hybridization with now-extinct hominins, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, and admixture between modern human populations. These studies, which are partly enabled by the technological advances in the sequencing of DNA from ancient remains, provide new insight into the sources of immune response variation in contemporary humans, such as the recently reported link between Neanderthal heritage and susceptibility to severe COVID-19 disease. Furthermore, ancient DNA analyses, in both humans and pathogens, allow to measure the action of natural selection on immune genes across time and to reconstruct the impact of past epidemics on the evolution of human immunity.
群体遗传学研究清楚地表明，免疫和宿主防御是最常受到自然选择作用的功能之一，并且增进了我们对相应基因的生物学相关性及其对可变免疫性状和疾病贡献的理解。在此，我们将聚焦于人类近期研究的一些适应感染因子的形式，包括与现已灭绝的古人类（如尼安德特人和丹尼索瓦人）的杂交，以及现代人群之间的混合。这些研究部分得益于古代遗骸DNA测序技术的进步，为当代人类免疫反应变异的来源提供了新的见解，比如最近报道的尼安德特人遗传与严重COVID-19疾病易感性之间的联系。此外，对人类和病原体的古代DNA分析，能够衡量自然选择在不同时间对免疫基因的作用，并重建过去流行病对人类免疫进化的影响。
