Helped form the human virus genetic variability
Viruses have played an important role in shaping human genetic variability, stomata according to a study published Feb. 19 in the open access journal PLoS Genetics. Researchers at the University of Milan and the Milan Polytechnic, Italy, used population genetics to identify genetic variants that increase susceptibility to viral infections or protect us from such infections.
Viruses have represented a threat to human populations in history and still represent a large proportion of illness and death worldwide. The identification of genetic variants that modulate susceptibility to viral infections is therefore essential for the development of new therapeutic approaches and vaccines.
Due to the long relationship between humans and viruses, variants of genes conferring increased resistance to these pathogens probably have been the target of natural selection. This concept has been exploited to identify such variants in the human genome and that modulate susceptibility to infection or the severity of the resulting disease.
In particular, the authors based their study on the idea that populations living in different geographical areas have been exposed to different viral loads and therefore have been subjected to a virus-based variable selection pressure. By analyzing genetic data for 52 populations distributed worldwide, the authors identified the variants that are most frequently when viral load is high. With this approach, they found 139 human genes that modulate susceptibility to viral infection, the protein products of several of these genes interact with each other and often with viral components.
The study was based on predictions generated by computer simulations, therefore will require experimental validation of these results. The authors conclude that approaches similar to that applied could be used to identify variants of susceptibility to infections transmitted by other pathogens in addition to the virus.
