Ancient Genes

UF Health Podcasts

Scientists had long wondered why northern Europe had the world’s highest prevalence of multiple sclerosis.

Thanks to the world’s largest ancient human gene bank — which includes bones and teeth from nearly 5,000 humans who lived across western Europe and Asia as long as 34,000 years ago — it’s no longer a mystery.

A United Kingdom-led research team traced the spread of multiple sclerosis, or MS, from its origins in what is now Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan to northwestern Europe.

The disease walked its way across the land, traveling along with the Yamnaya [Yum-nye-uh] people, who with their sheep, cattle and newfangled wheeled wagons were a population-defining migration.

Europeans today are a genetic mixture of three ancestral populations: hunter-gatherers, first farmers and what had been considered an unknown “Ancient North Eurasian population” from the east. Those were the Yamnayans.

The Yamnayans carried with them the genetic variants associated with a risk of developing MS. In their case, the genes were a blessing, likely shielding them from infections they might otherwise have caught from their herded animals.

The researchers analyzed data from a new gene bank of ancient DNA, created in the past five years.

The gene bank is the first of its kind in the world. The tested bones and teeth are in museums that span from Europe to western Asia. The researchers hope to glean more from the relics about the roots of autism, bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression and schizophrenia.

So spare a moment, if you will, for our hunter-gatherer, iron-tool wielding and even our marauding Viking ancestors. What they left behind may help us all.