March 30, 2007

ESHG 2007

In this summer's European Society of Human Genetics conference one of the presentations will be on "Origin of the Etruscans: novel clues from the Y chromosome lineages". I wonder if my prediction of a high representation of Y haplogroup J1 (almost equivalent to J*(xJ2)) among the ancient Etruscans will be supported by this research. Unfortunately, I did not see an abstract posted yet. Another interesting title is "Epidemics of viral haemorrhagic fever in Medieval times as a possible selection pressure for CCR5del32 in Europe: new insights from Croatian island isolates". This involves an allele which confers resistance to the HIV virus and which is found frequently particularly in Northern Europeans, so perhaps its presence may be the result of some past selection effect against a different disease.

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