Jun 16, 2015 06:00:00

What is the astonishing 'evolution' of the clan that overcame the fatal brain disease that eats the human brain?

In the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, where it was once customary to eat human meat, intractable brain diseases caused by eating human meat have become prevalent and many lives have been lost. However, it has become clear that those who survived the epidemic of frequent brain diseases have undergone a genetic 'evolution' that embodies

Darwin's theory of evolution.

A naturally occurring variant of the human prion protewin completely prevents prion disease: Nature: Nature Publishing Group
http://ww.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14510.html#affil-auth

Diet of human brains helped Papua New Guinea tribe to resist disease | Ancient Origins
http://www.ancient-origins.net/diet-human-brains-helped-papua-new-guinea-tribe-resist-disease-003233

How a history of eating human brains protected this tribe from brain disease --The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/11/how-a-history-of-eating-human-brains-protected-this-tribe-from-brain-disease/

The Fore people, who live in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, once had the custom of eating the flesh of the dead as a ritual to soothe the souls of the dead. In the Fore people, the body of the dead was eaten by men, and the brain and internal organs of the dead were eaten by women and children. Since it was banned by the Australian government, which once ruled part of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s, it is no longer carnivorous.

In the Fore people, who had a habit of eating human meat, there was a situation in which a brain disease with a very high case fatality rate was often prevalent and many lives were lost. According to NINDS , 2% of the Fore population died of the disease on an annual basis.

Based on the fact that most people suffering from a mysterious brain disease are women, it was later discovered that this disease is a type of

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease called 'Kuru disease'. It was found that the cause was human carnivorous food. The mechanism that causes kuru disease is that prions, which are mutated infectious factors of proteins, are taken up and accumulated in the body by eating the human brain. When Kuru disease develops, the brain and organs become sponge-like with small holes, and symptoms of dementia appear in the early stages, and gradually die through symptoms such as language attrition, muscle contraction, and memory loss. In addition, since the incubation period of kuru disease was very long, it seems that people who develop the disease continue to appear even after the custom of eating human meat is abolished.

A research team led by Dr. John Collinge of University College London investigated the genes of Fore people who had survived the kuru epidemic and found a genetic variation peculiar to the Fore people. That is, in some parts of humans and many other vertebrates that have an amino acid sequence called glycine , the Fore family sequences valine instead of glycine, and this difference in gene sequence is the key to resistance to kuru. Dr. Collinji thought.

By Andrea Laurel

Therefore, when Dr. Corinji et al. Experimented with two types of mice, a normal mouse and a mouse that reproduced the gene sequence peculiar to the Fore people, it was found that the latter acquired resistance to kuru disease. It was also found that this gene sequence is effective not only for kuru disease but also for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in general. 'The Fore-specific genetic changes are the genetic evolutions acquired during the Kuru epidemic, and are just a prominent example of Darwin's theory of evolution occurring in humans,' said Dr. Corinji.

The advanced genetic characteristics of the Fore people are expected to be useful in the research and development of effective treatments for brain diseases that may be caused by other prions such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.