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by spondylosaurus
1011 days ago
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Re."white people disease," I thought this was a neat excerpt from later in the article (about Parkinson's, to be fair, not CF): > Njideka Okubadejo, a neurologist at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, welcomes the award announcement. Okubadejo, Singleton — who leads the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program — and others have identified a new genetic risk factor for Parkinson’s disease in the GBA1 gene in people with African ancestry that is rarely seen in those of European descent7. “The next step is to find a biological mechanism by which the gene causes the disease,” Okubadejo says. “Then you can build upon that to reduce the likelihood of the disease occurring.” The distribution of random genes among ethnic subgroups is always an interesting glimpse into the situational tradeoffs that certain genes bring. Like how the gene that causes sickle cell anemia is really good for malaria resistance... but it also gives you sickle cell anemia. Which might actually be a decent tradeoff when malaria is a constant threat, so you can imagine why it's prevalent in areas where malaria-carrying mosquitos flourish. Or you hear about different HLA subtypes where like, one variation offers some kind of useful trait or immunity, but it also brings an increased risk of skin cancer, but the people who carry that gene generally lived in an area without much sun and so it was still a net advantage. Until modern times, when those people have descendants across the globe... Also, very glad to hear your friend's doing well :) |
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Siddhartha Mukherjee talks about this in The Gene.