When discussing human evolution, many people think of bones uncovered in Africa like the skeleton named Lucy or mention that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans coexisted in Europe. However, our evolution has not ceased in recent years even if the evolutionary changes are not as physically obvious as the difference between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens’ skulls. Any changes in our environment influence the complement of genes we pass on to our children and grandchildren and even if those genes are passed on to the next generation. When it comes to diseases, some deadly infections can have a tremendous influence on the immune genes passed on to descendants, especially by those individuals that survived the disease and had children. However, determining whether any genetic changes are due to disease can be difficult. There is not always a control population for a particular disease where one group was infected and the other not, to identify changes. Luckily for the study published in PNAS, researchers had access to two populations that had experienced similar disease pressure (e.g., the Black Death) and one genetically related population that had not. Continue reading “The Role of the Black Death in Human Evolution”