[ExI] bikers again

[Dylan Distasio]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 11:15 AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Some time ago (at least a year) I was impressed by an article (in
> Science I think) which discussed positive selection of genes from
> Neanderthals.  The article noted that around 6000 genes (of the 20,000
> active in humans) were associated with virus resistance, about half
> against DNA and half against RNA viruses.  Wow.  Close to 1/3 of the
> human genome is associated with virus resistance.
>

Very interesting, thanks for sharing this.   I don't know if this is the
same article as I didn't read it at the time, but this is as close as I
could find
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31095-X#secsectitle0100.
It's certainly in the same ballpark if not the exact paper.  This idea also
dovetails nicely with the evolution of sexual reproduction itself under the
Red Queen hypothesis.   Parasites are another very interesting related area
of study in terms of driving evolution.  I must admit I have been both
fascinated and horrified by them for a very long time.  The movie Alien of
course didn't help.   Zimmer's 'Parasite Rex' is an easy read for anyone
interested in broaching the subject, although it is a little long in the
tooth at this point.

I also recently saw that Candida (a fungus family) is making a comeback.
 There is an interesting hypothesis that mammalian (and in particular
human) body temperatures are particularly hostile to most fungus because
the majority of them don't do well at higher temperatures.  The hypothesis
is that warming global temperatures have selected for Candida that is heat
resistant which doesn't bode well for us based on our limited abilities to
combat fungus pharmaceutically.  Hopefully, we'll see more research dollars
thrown at it somewhat proactively:

"Six years ago, a new infection began popping up in four different
hospitals on three different continents, all around the same time. It
wasn’t a bacteria, or a virus. It was ... a killer fungus. No one knew
where it came from, or why. Today, the story of an ancient showdown between
fungus and mammals that started when dinosaurs disappeared from the earth.
Back then, the battle swung in our favor (spoiler alert!) and we’ve been
hanging onto that win ever since. But one scientist suggests that the rise
of this new infectious fungus indicates our edge is slipping, degree by
increasing degree."

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/fungus-amungus
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