The Delta 32 Mutation
A factoid from the evening’s dinner party, courtesy of Margaret, who some of you might remember from CMU (she certainly recalls some of you), and who is now doing interesting HIV research: there are apparently some people who are highly immune to HIV. These people have what is known as the delta 32 mutation of the CCR5 gene, which changes the shape of the receptor sites that the virus uses to bind to. If both of your parents have this mutation, you inherit strong immunity. (With only one, the infection is slowed, but not stymied.) What’s interesting is that this same mutation appears to have been effective against the bubonic plague as well—that the passage of the plague through Europe might have selected for the mutation, so that to this day, some close-knit European communities have an unusually high incidence of the mutation.