Human-specific evolution in battling bugs and building babies
Friday, November 5, 2010 - 09:10
in Biology & Nature
Although human and chimpanzee immune systems have many identical components, this is not the case for the family of killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) controlling white blood cells known as natural killer (NK) cells. Published in the open-access journal PloS Genetics on November 4, a paper by Stanford University researchers describes qualitative KIR differences, acquired after humans and chimpanzees separated 6 million years ago and mainly a consequence of innovation in the human line. These differences open up an exciting avenue for explaining the differential susceptibility of humans and chimpanzees to devastating infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria...