A Coronavirus Epidemic , Struck 20,000 Years Ago, DNA Evidence Shows.
'Daily Mail' reports that a new study found evidence that a coronavirus outbreak struck East Asia approximately 20,000 years ago.
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A team of researchers led by the University of Queensland looked at the specific genes that code for proteins that interact with coronaviruses.
Among people of East Asian ancestry, researchers found evidence of natural selection for adaptations that would have served to lessen disease severity.
Kirill Alexandrov of the Queensland University of Technology, one of the paper's authors, said that the information in the human genome goes back tens of thousands of years.
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In the course of the epidemic, selection favored variants of pathogenesis-related human genes with adaptive changes presumably leading to a less severe disease, Kirill Alexandrov, synthetic biologist, Queensland University of Technology, via 'Daily Mail'.
By developing greater insights into the ancient viral foes, we gain understanding of how genomes of different human populations adapted to the viruses that have been recently recognized as a significant driver of human evolution, Kirill Alexandrov, synthetic biologist, Queensland University of Technology, via 'Daily Mail'.
The full findings of the study can be found in the journal 'Current Biology.'