Neanderthal Sex Boosted Immunity In Modern Humans 190
NotSanguine writes "Sexual relations between ancient humans and their evolutionary cousins were critical for our modern immune systems, researchers report (paper itself is subscription only) in the journal Science. Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude."
Re:uhhh a tooth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire comment reeks of idiocy. You begin your tirade by implying that DNA is invalid because it happens to have been extracted from a tooth belonging to a subspecies to which we have assigned a name you feel is funny. You then begin a series of rhetorical questions that, in the order you ask them, express disdain for the government, a misunderstanding of what constitutes proof, lay out a false analogy between "rampant wild sex" within a population and interbreeding of moderately divergent populations in nature, and an implication that, because you lack the background and/or intelligence to understand how researchers arrived at their conclusions, the scientific community operates on authority instead of on evidence. Typically when I see that argument it's a form of projection, usually from a religious background. You finish your useless rant by completely ignoring that various avenues of research are being carried on concurrently, that evolutionary insights are absolutely central to HIV and AIDS research, and then throwing in an appeal to pity not really aimed at anyone in particular. The final syllable of your comment is "ha", by which you mean to imply that anyone who takes you seriously would consider your point established. Go back to conservapedia, creationist.
Families Subject to Health Problems (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often wondered about some families I've known with continual health problems.
I have considered that maybe they did not inherit sufficient "protection" or DNA to give them resistance to certain viruses, fungi and bacteria or maybe more properly the ability to generate such resistance.
Given the article's credit to interbreeding amongst early groups and the variations in today's populations of ancient DNA traces, I am wondering more about my hypothesis.
We humans are very diverse indeed; it is more than skin deep.
Re:The good old days of evolution... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah, the Republican credo: Tell no SMALL lies.
No, that's the left. Hence your attempt to claim that Hitler was right-wing, and deny that the 'progressives' were firm believers in eugenics and the murder of 'undesirables' before Hitler's attempt to put that into practice made them embarrassed to talk about such things in public.
They still, of course, believe it in private; just look at the 'Greens' wank fantasies about eliminating billions of people so they can live 'naturally'.