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Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

sciencedaily.com

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Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#21

Post by taurath »

svachalek wrote: post #16
deanstag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be that they were not diagnosed as heart attacks before that. edit: And also maybe general life style differences regarding availability and richness of food, exercise, shorter life spans etc.

In the 19th century, a heart attack may have been recorded as "old age", "sudden death", "apoplexy", "stomach cramps", "spasms", or a lot of other things. As long there weren't any suspicious circumstances I don't think they usually looked into it that closely.

I mean, this was when amputation and leeches was the pinnacle of medicinal triage. Life expectancy hit 49 in 1900 - for most of the 1800s it was below 40, a fact that still blows my mind today.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#22

Post by zyang »

jedberg wrote: post #18

If this turns out to be true, I wonder if this is something CRISPR could fix...

Pets such as rabbits, hamsters, dogs are also prone to heart attacks. I think it has more to do with sedentary lifestyle. Unfortunately for most pets, it's not by choice.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#23

Post by raverbashing »

taurath wrote: post #21
svachalek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 19th century, a heart attack may have been recorded as "old age", "sudden death", "apoplexy", "stomach cramps", "spasms", or a lot of other things. As long there weren't any suspicious circumstances I don't think they usually looked into it that closely.

I mean, this was when amputation and leeches was the pinnacle of medicinal triage. Life expectancy hit 49 in 1900 - for most of the 1800s it was below 40, a fact that still blows my mind today.

Life expectancy values were skewed a lot by infant mortality. This doesn't mean your average person died at 50.

Life expectancy @ 5y.o. (not sure about the exact age, but > 1y.o. is fine) is a better value to compare

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#24

Post by hirenj »

jedberg wrote: post #18

If this turns out to be true, I wonder if this is something CRISPR could fix...

We could probably edit in a working copy, but I wouldn't be so quick to do that: Sialic acids are all over our cells, and we don't understand what the difference is between the two sialic acid types in terms of impact on molecular environment. One plus side to losing this gene is our ability to do long distance running.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#25

Post by hirenj »

crabLouse wrote: post #5

Since the driver of the selection against the related gene seems to be malaria, I wonder if this is linked to prevalence of body hair on human ancestors. Bug bites on hairless skin probably had something to do with dying of disease, and the early homonids that had the gene seem to be the ones hit the hardest. We also see evolutionary markers related to bed bugs, head lice and body lice. Maybe mosquitos and genes link…

As far as I remember, malaria comes in via glycosaminoglycans, and not our sialylated glycans. It could very well be related to our symbiosis with bacteria however.

Edit: I forgot the earlier work demonstrating Plasmodium specificity to NeuGc, so yeah maybe malaria!

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#26

Post by jldugger »

hirenj wrote: post #24
jedberg wrote: post #18

If this turns out to be true, I wonder if this is something CRISPR could fix...

We could probably edit in a working copy, but I wouldn't be so quick to do that: Sialic acids are all over our cells, and we don't understand what the difference is between the two sialic acid types in terms of impact on molecular environment. One plus side to losing this gene is our ability to do long distance running.

So the benefit of this gene is... we die of heart attacks unless we go jogging regularly? Where do I sign up to get it back?

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#27

Post by bkyan »

jldugger wrote: post #26
hirenj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could probably edit in a working copy, but I wouldn't be so quick to do that: Sialic acids are all over our cells, and we don't understand what the difference is between the two sialic acid types in terms of impact on molecular environment. One plus side to losing this gene is our ability to do long distance running.

So the benefit of this gene is... we die of heart attacks unless we go jogging regularly? Where do I sign up to get it back?

The other benefit (of not having this gene) is post-birth brain development.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#28

Post by akuji1993 »

taurath wrote: post #21
svachalek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 19th century, a heart attack may have been recorded as "old age", "sudden death", "apoplexy", "stomach cramps", "spasms", or a lot of other things. As long there weren't any suspicious circumstances I don't think they usually looked into it that closely.

I mean, this was when amputation and leeches was the pinnacle of medicinal triage. Life expectancy hit 49 in 1900 - for most of the 1800s it was below 40, a fact that still blows my mind today.

So people had less time to "wear the heart out", they moved significantly more and their diet probably was better then our average as long as they could eat regularly.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#29

Post by fifnir »

olliej wrote: post #2

I like how the headlines explicitly states humans . For yet another study in ... mice. There are other options like dogs and pigs which are much better models for human biology, so if you really want to make a claim about subtle effects of human genetics you need to be as close to a human model as possible. This is entirely ignoring the someone generous leap they make that one single gene mutation is responsible for…

Oh another couch biologist,there's one in every thread.. thanks for all the observations, we really hadn't thought of any of that, you single-handedly salvaged modern biological research !!

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#30

Post by zaarn »

akuji1993 wrote: post #28
taurath wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this was when amputation and leeches was the pinnacle of medicinal triage. Life expectancy hit 49 in 1900 - for most of the 1800s it was below 40, a fact that still blows my mind today.

So people had less time to "wear the heart out", they moved significantly more and their diet probably was better then our average as long as they could eat regularly.

For most their diet probably wasn't better than a modern diet, just different. If you max out at 40 years, it's difficult to tell if your diet is bad in old age.

Farmers and middle-to-lower class people only 90 years ago (as per my grandmother) in my region where mainly eating potatoes, grain, and meat, veggies and fruit were usually only eaten for sundays, since it was more expensive on the market.

That doesn't sound like the pinnacle of healthy diets.

Even farther back, people ate whatever they found or farmed with very little variety. If you don't get old, you can have some very unhealthy diets without much ill effect. Diets around the world in the pre-industrial era have ranged from 100% meat to 0% meat, with grain fruit and starches also ranging all over the 100%-0% scale.

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