Insufficient evidence for natural selection associated with the Black Death.

ABSTRACT: Klunk et al. analyzed ancient DNA data from individuals in London and Denmark before, during and after the Black Death [1], and argued that allele frequency changes at immune genes were too large to be produced by random genetic drift and thus must reflect natural selection. They also identified four specific variants that they claimed show evidence of selection including at ERAP2, for which they estimate a selection coefficient of 0.39-several times larger than any selection coefficient on a common human variant reported to date. Here we show that these claims are unsupported for four reasons. First, the signal of enrichment of large allele frequency changes in immune genes comparing people in London before and after the Black Death disappears after an appropriate randomization tes

SUBMITTER: Barton AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10055098 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature