Medieval DNA, Modern Medicine

Via Everything Medieval, I found this interesting abstract from the Archaological Institute of America, about a project trying to extract DNA from bodies found at medieval archaelogical sites:

Will a cemetery excavation establish a link between the Black Death and resistance to AIDS?

The Dutch team hopes, for example, that their project will reveal the origin and prevalence of a genetic variant that increases resistance to one of the world's most lethal viruses--HIV. Today, nearly 10 percent of people of northern European descent possess this variant, known as the CCR5D32 allele, and the discovery is sparking the development of a new class of AIDS-fighting drugs. Evidence suggests that this mutation first arose 3,100 to 7,800 years ago, but how did it become so prevalent across Europe in an age before the AIDS epidemic? Could this mutation also have boosted resistance to an earlier epidemic, such as smallpox or the Black Death? In search of new data, Knijff and his team will search for this variant in the DNA of Eindhoven's citizens. "There is no doubt that these studies are valuable," says Susan Scott, a University of Liverpool historian who has written extensively on the Black Death and its possible connection to the HIV-resistance variant. "Whilst I don't think [ancient DNA] studies will yield a vaccine for AIDS, they may assist molecular geneticists to develop some gene therapy."

I've had my ear open for these sorts of tidbits, about the relationship between Black Death and AIDS, ever since I took "Plagues and Renaissance Literature" with Professor Ernest Gilman as a brand-spankin' new graduate student in the spring of 2006 (AGES ago!). It was a fascinating class, constantly drawing parallels between medieval and early modern epidemics and contemporary ones. My dad, a huge PBS fan, sat me down to watch The Secrets of the Dead with him, which featured an episode on this very topic, about a New Yorker named Steve Crohn, to his own surprise, survived the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, despite a fair amount of exposure:

The Secrets of the Dead episode begins not with HIV but by investigating why so many residents of Eyam, England, survived the black death when it hit the remote village in 1665. Research by geneticist Stephen O'Brien has traced Crohn's Delta 32 mutation back hundreds of years to towns like Eyam, where the defensive genetic mutation held off the black death in much the same way it now protects Crohn from HIV. Today, about 10% of people of European heritage are estimated to be "Delta 32-heterozygous," which means they received the mutation from one parent and may have increased resistance to HIV. About 1% of that population, like Crohn, are Delta 32-homozygous, having inherited the genetic mutation from both parents.

Crohn learned about Delta 32 after he was enrolled in a 1994 Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center study of a dozen HIV-exposed individuals who remained seronegative over long periods of time. When Scottish researcher Bill Paxton mixed Crohn's CD4 immunity cells with HIV in the laboratory, "we could not establish an infection," Paxton recalls, "even with a high dose of HIV. This was something we had never seen before and was extremely provocative and exciting."

I agree, it is extremely provocative and exciting. It's one of those interesting things I can point to when people ask me, "How is what you study relevant?" (mean people, people I don't continue to associate with, people I hurl curses and poxes at from my private alchemy lab at home). It's something I plan to look into a little more.

The advantage of working for NYU's general education department is that I have a contact in just about every department on campus. We have no permanent faculty of our own and so we steal a professor or two from every other department. I place all their textbook orders and collate all their class hand-outs, beautifully I might add, and so they usually don't mind hearing out my silly questions. I got my eye on a particular biochemist at the moment, so perhaps, dear readers, I will have more news for you soon!