Natural selection and heart disease risk in Europeans

Matthew V. Rockman:

We also find evidence for the action of positive selection, beginning approximately 24,000 years ago, increasing the frequency of the high-expression allele in Europe but not elsewhere. Positive selection is evident in statistical tests of differentiation among populations and haplotype diversity within populations. Europeans have greater arterial elasticity and suffer dramatically fewer coronary heart disease events than they would have had this selection not occurred.

Single allele lowers heart risk

Evolutionary path to the heart

Heart gene yields insights into evolution, disease risk