-Caveat Lector- http://helix.nature.com/nsu/991202/991202-5.html Nature - Science Update Tuesday 30 November 1999 relics : Secret of the mummies' tomb KRISTINE NOVAK Mummy DNA has revealed that a type of leukemia virus which causes adult T cell leukemia may have originated with the paleo-Mongoloids who migrated to Japan and South America over 10,000 years ago, researchers announce in Nature Medicine1. The virus, technically known as ‘HTLV-1’, is different from most others in that it is not evenly distributed world-wide, but occurs in distinct populations in regions of Japan, the Carribean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea, northern Australia, and among South American native peoples. Furthermore, sub-types of HTLV-1 exist that are even more geographically limited. One specific subtype, ‘Cosmopolitan group A’, occurs only among native peoples in the Andes mountain area of northern Chile and in a sub-population of the Japanese. Now a team of researchers from Chile and Japan have found a possible explanation for this unusual geographic and ethic clustering. The group, led by Kazuo Tajima of the Aichi Cancer Center Research Institute in Nagoya, Japan, knew that the Japanese and the native peoples of northern Chile are both descendants of paleo-Mongoloids. Over 10,000 years ago, some of the paleo-Mongoloids migrated to Japan, while others crossed the land bridge formed between Alaska and Siberia and moved on to South America. Tajima’s group asked whether these ancient Mongoloid people possessed the HTLV-1 strain that is carried by modern-day Japanese and Chilean people. To answer this question, they studied the hundreds of ancient Andean ‘mummies’ excavated by archeologists from the Atamaca desert, a rainless plateau that runs from the Pacific Ocean to the Andes Mountains in northern Chile. Because of the arid and salty conditions of this region, the Atacamanian people that were buried there over 1,000 years ago were well-preserved. Hence Tajima and his team were able to isolate bone-marrow DNA and determine whether these people also carried this specific type of HTLV-1. Tajima’s group screened over 100 mummies, and was able to isolate viral DNA from one of them. Analysis of the viral sequence revealed that the Atacamanian people did indeed carry the same strain of HTLV-1 as modern-day Chilean and Japanese individuals, . "The HTLV-1 isolated from the mummy might be the aboriginal HTLV-1 prevailing among Mongoloid people in Asia and the Andes over 1,500 years ago," says Tajima. He adds that the ancestral HTLV-1 DNA sequence was likely to be maintained by the descendants of these ancient people because the virus replicates very slowly, providing fewer opportunities for mutations. "This type of analysis could be a useful tool for studying the history of human retroviral infection as well as human prehistoric migration," says Tajima. Other types of HTLV-1 also have unique geographical distributions, and epidemiologists are trying to determine how these came to be. "The African HTLV-1 might have developed independently of Mongoloid people, while the Carribean HTLV-1 appears to be the mixture of two sub-types - the African and the Mongoloid". "Nobody knows which group was first infected with HTLV-1, only that it originally came from simians," says Tajima who believes that the human form of the virus probably originated through independent infections occurring in Africans and Melanesians. Kristine Novak is the News and Views Editor of Nature Medicine ( http://medicine.nature.com/ ) 1. Li, H.-G., Fujiyoshi, T., Lou, H., Yahiki, S., Sonoda, S., Cartier, L., Nunez, L., Munoz, I., Horai, S. & Tajima, K. The presence of ancient human T-cell lymphotrophic virus type I provirus DNA in an Andean mummy Nature Medicine 5, 1428 (1999). © Macmillan Magazines Ltd 1999 - NATURE NEWS SERVICE Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1999 Reg. No. 785998 England. . DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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