A coronavirus epidemic broke out in Asia and resulted in many deaths, until humans adapted to living with the microorganism. If it reminds you of something, know that it is impossible. Because this was more than 20,000 years ago.
A team of researchers from the Universities of Arizona, California in San Francisco and Adelaide in Australia have found evidence that the ancestors of East Asian men and women faced an outbreak caused by a SARS-like coronavirus. Cov-2 finding the traces of the ancient one emergency, so to speak, within the genome of their modern descendants, originating in the area that today corresponds to China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan.
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Like rings in tree trunks
“The modern human genome contains information dating back tens of thousands of years, which, like the rings of a tree, gives us an idea of the conditions our DNA has faced as time passes,” he explained. Kirill Alexandrov of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Health of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane and co-author of the research. A little like saying that in the nuclei of our cells we can find data on the history, on the experiences, and yes also on the epidemics, which our ancestors had to face during their long march up to the 21st century.
The first form of life that cannot be attacked by viruses was created in the laboratory
The researchers used data from the 1000 Genomes Project, o Project 1000 Genomes – the largest public catalog of genetic variants of our species that has been collecting and investigating human DNA samples since 2008 – focusing in particular on changes in the genes that code for proteins that interact with Sars-Cov-2 : the our coronavirus, this time.
Without using living cells, they synthesized human proteins and those of the Covid-19 virus, and demonstrated that they interact with each other directly and in a specific way. The team’s computer scientists applied evolutionary analysis to the human genomic dataset to uncover evidence of the remote Covid-like outbreak.
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The idea, ultimately, is that in the course of the coronavirus epidemic of antiquity, selection would have favored, and thus brought out, protective variants of genes related to pathogenesis (the mechanism by which the virus causes disease), that is, versions of genes that supposedly allowed our ancestors to become less seriously ill.
The last 20 years. And the last 20 thousand
There have been three major coronavirus outbreaks in the past 20 years: Sars-Cov, responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome, which originated in China in 2002 and killed more than 800 people. Mers-Cov, the cause of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, which has claimed more than 850 victims. And, and we are today, Sars-Cov-2, which caused 3.8 million deaths. Now, this study of the evolution of the human genome tells us about another great coronavirus epidemic that broke out a couple of thousand years before Mers and Sars.
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But, in addition to increasing our knowledge of the new and old microscopic enemies of our species, what does this research tell us? And in what, if it can, be useful to us, perhaps also in terms of health or prevention? “By gathering more information on ancient viral enemies – explains Alexandrov – we can understand how the genomes of different human populations have adapted to viruses, which have recently been recognized as a significant engine of our evolution”. But there is also more. “Identifying the viruses that caused epidemics in the distant past and that could do so in the future, in principle allows us to draw up a list of potentially dangerous microorganisms – added the scientist – and therefore to develop diagnostic tests, vaccines and drugs in in case they should come back. “Because the enemies do, sometimes they come back, even if after 20 thousand years.
8% of our genome has a viral origin
“In reality, the encounter between coronavirus and East Asian populations about 20 thousand years ago is a recent episode in the long history of the relationship between viruses and humans, a relationship so close and prolonged that about 8% of the genome human has a viral origin ”, explains Giovanni Destro-Bisol, professor of anthropology and human biodiversity at Sapienza in Rome.
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Epidemics are not an accident of history
“Viruses – continues the expert – played a role in the competition between the first hominids, we are talking about 6-7 million years ago. And they continued to do so: they played one, decisive, when the first sapiens left Africa starting from more than 200 thousand years ago. In short, large-scale viral infections are not an accident of history but an inevitable consequence of the number of viruses and their adaptability acquired during a much longer evolution than ours, facilitated by their simplicity and adaptability, to to which we have contributed by altering natural habitats. Which has further increased the opportunities for these tiny but highly efficient war machines to invade our much more complex but vulnerable cells. “
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