A new study has found genes that offer protection from prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), in populations on four continents. This spread might be an evolutionary response to the dangers of cannibalism.
The safeguarding DNA is most common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. This is the legacy of the Fore's custom of eating their dead relatives in funereal feasts. Last century, cannibalism triggered an epidemic of a deadly brain disease called kuru.
"This is the signature of natural selection in a population where there's been a devastating recent epidemic due to cannibalism," says team member Simon Mead of University College London. Seeing the same signature in other parts of the world suggests that diseases may once have spread by the same route, he says.
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