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Neanderthal Sex Boosted Immunity In Modern Humans

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."

11 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Old news? by grub · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sure this knowledge was a big influence on who Mrs. Ballmer chose as a mate.

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  2. Re:The good old days of evolution... by V!NCENT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You do realise that being the fittest (read: more succesful) in our current society, means being a total asshole with shitloads of money to pay for every single need?

    There have been some tests that show that the happiest (non-suicidal people) are the people who arent stupid (120).

    So that leaves us with a 110 IQ, rich asshole to mate with everyone.

    That doesn't sound so nice to me.

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  3. So, what you're saying is... by MindPrison · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...that I should have sex with my neighbors?

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  4. That is what sex is for... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apparently, one of the major upsides of sex(from a darwinian, rather than purely recreational, perspective) of the not-intuitively-all-that-sensible arrangement of having to seek out a conspecific, risk sexually transmitted infection, and mate simply in order to reproduce, is the rapid genetic diversification you can achieve by recombining genomes with others. Your asexual organisms have it much easier; but they have to depend on mutation(or, as with some bacteria, quasi-sex genetic exchange mechanisms).

    The neat organisms, in my opinion, are the edge cases that can go either way. this piece(sorry about the paywall...) examines snails that can either reproduce sexually or spawn clones asexually. As it turns out, in areas with higher parasite loads, the snails resort to sex at much higher rates in order to keep abreast of the parasite threat, while the less pressured snails go for the rapid and low-risk strategy of asexual cloning.

    1. Re:That is what sex is for... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Probably don't need to worry about our slimy overlords; but it would be interesting to know if this bit of immune-boosting quasi-bestiality helped make humans the pervasive species they are:

      Compared to hunter-gatherers, residents of combination agricultural and town/city civilizations are horribly disease riddled. Animal husbandry means zoonotic diseases and parasites in horrific quantity, grain-based agriculture means truly hideous oral health, and urbanization means drinking and sleeping where you shit. It's only in places with 19th+ century sanitation and 20th+ century medicine that the advantages of wealth and technology in sedentary civilizations started to translate into disease levels less horrid than pre-agricultural ones(even then, things like the yearly flu shot because some new combination of porcine, avian, and human viruses has emerged is a classic animal-husbandry parasite issue).. One wonders if any other reasonably-smart hominids ever took a crack at farming; but had to give it up or die because their immune systems just couldn't hack it...

  5. Re:uhhh a tooth? by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  6. Families Subject to Health Problems by BoRegardless · · Score: 3, 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.

  7. Did Not Read The Fine Article FAIL, er... ure. by Dogtanian · · Score: 3, Funny

    Must be why white girls give it for nig-nogs.

    Definitely worth reading the article before trolling... it actually states the complete opposite:-

    "At least one variety of HLA gene occurs frequently in present day populations from West Asia, but is rare in Africans.

    The researchers say that is because after ancient humans left Africa some 65,000 years ago, they started breeding with their more primitive relations in Europe, while those who stayed in Africa did not .

    "The HLA genes that the Neanderthals and Denisovans had, had been adapted to life in Europe and Asia for several hundred thousand years, whereas the recent migrants from Africa wouldn't have had these genes," said study leader Peter Parham."

    Also

    there is a 8-inch uncut nigger cock pumping their precious little angle's pussy

    Maybe their little "angle" was just doing it to be obtuse. She can get away with it if she is acute girl after all...

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  8. Re:The good old days of evolution... by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now would that be a society based upon psychopathic greed or intellectual prowess or humanitarianism or athletic ability or to stupid to plan ahead and use contraceptives.

    Just want to clarify the basis of selection and not even look to touch on the issue of which is better for human society a matriarchy or a patriarchy. Just that at the moment it is fairly clear that majority polygamy based societies seem to be pretty unstable, treat the plural members of that relationship more like chattel, child abuse seems to be a national pass time and fairly backward.

    Perhaps someone needs to explain the fundamental difference between humans 'a social species' and say lizards. It is not competition within human society, it is competition of the species who by collective and social effort establish species competitiveness. In fact it is very likely that to promote psychotic, lizard like, competition within the human species would break down human society and thus leave humanity vulnerable to direct physical competition with the rest of the biosphere (a guaranteed physical loser).

    In human society it is basically insane to think of the rest of human society as the competitor and as something to be preyed upon, exploited and competed with. This is regardless of the last thirty years mass media messages that psychopathy and narcissism are desirable states of a mass consumption humanity (selfishness and forcing ones ego upon others).

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  9. Interracial relationships.... by lenski · · Score: 3, Informative

    inter-racial relationships are almost always a white woman and a black man.

    No.

    Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.

    http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1616/american-marriage-interracial-interethnic?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress

    I should know better.. Don't feed trolls, especially cowards... But this whole race thing needs to be stomped where ever and whenever it appears.

  10. Re:Hey Babe by guruevi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Or you'd be really mad about the Geico commercials.

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