ArticleCurrent biology : CB2021
An ancient viral epidemic involving host coronavirus interacting genes more than 20,000 years ago in East Asia.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 47 papers.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 104 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genomic insights into natural selection in recent human history.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Reassessing Early COVID-19 Strategies in East Asia: Insights From Japan and Korea.Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe chi · 2026Review
- Fast pairwise coalescence enables gene-resolution scans for recent selection in diverse human populations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- C > U mutations generate immunogenic peptides in SARS-CoV-2.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Natural selection exerted by historical coronavirus epidemic(s): comparative genetic analysis in China Kadoorie Biobank and UK Biobank.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Human dispersal into East Eurasia: ancient genome insights and the need for research on physiological adaptations.Journal of physiological anthropology · 2025Review
- Positive Selection on Mammalian Immune Genes-Effects of Gene Function and Selective Constraint.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Excess Deaths in Korea During the COVID-19 Pandemic: 2020-2022.Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe chi · 2024Article
- Environmental variation and genetic diversity contribute to population differences in immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 risk.Genes and immunity · 2024Article
- Novel genetic association of the Furin gene polymorphism rs1981458 with COVID-19 severity among Indian populations.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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- Assessing the Presence of Recent Adaptation in the Human Genome With Mixture Density Regression.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
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- Infectious diseases may have arrested the southward advance of microblades in Upper Palaeolithic East Asia.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Versatile Detection of Diverse Selective Sweeps with Flex-Sweep.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Understanding natural selection in Holocene Europe using multi-locus genotype identity scans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Targeted genotyping of COVID-19 patients reveals a signature of complement C3 and factor B coding SNPs associated with severe infection.Immunobiology · 2023Article
- Electrically regulated cell-based intervention for viral infections.Bioengineering & translational medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
10 authors at 7 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has emphasized the vulnerability of human populations to novel viral pressures, despite the vast array of epidemiological and biomedical tools now available. Notably, modern human genomes contain evolutionary information tracing back tens of thousands of years, which may help identify the viruses that have impacted our ancestors-pointing to which viruses have future pandemic potential. Here, we apply evolutionary analyses to human genomic datasets to recover selection events involving tens of human genes that interact with coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, that likely started more than 20,000 years ago. These adaptive events were limited to the population ancestral to East Asian populations. Multiple lines of functional evidence support an ancient viral selective pressure, and East Asia is the geographical origin of several modern coronavirus epidemics. An arms race with an ancient coronavirus, or with a different virus that happened to use similar interactions as coronaviruses with human hosts, may thus have taken place in ancestral East Asian populations. By learning more about our ancient viral foes, our study highlights the promise of evolutionary information to better predict the pandemics of the future. Importantly, adaptation to ancient viral epidemics in specific human populations does not necessarily imply any difference in genetic susceptibility between different human populations, and the current evidence points toward an overwhelming impact of socioeconomic factors in the case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.