Researchers have uncovered recent traces of adaptation to malaria in the DNA of people from Cabo Verde, an island nation off the African coast.
An archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean some 385 miles offshore from Senegal, Cabo Verde was uninhabited until the mid-1400s, when it was colonized by Portuguese sailors who brought enslaved Africans with them and forced them to work the land.
The development of malaria resistance in Cabo Verde took only 500 years. “That is the blink of an eye on the scale of evolutionary time,”
The Africans who were forcibly brought to Cabo Verde carried a genetic mutation, which the European colonists lacked, that prevents a type of malaria parasite known as
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Malaria Threw Human Evolution Into Overdrive on This African Archipelago In the last 500 years, the people of Cabo Verde have evolved at a breakneck pace thanks to a genetic variant, inherited from their African ancestors, that protects against the ravages of malaria. Credit: F. Mira
DURHAM, N.C. Malaria is an ancient scourge, but it’s still leaving its mark on the human genome. And now, researchers have uncovered recent traces of adaptation to malaria in the DNA of people from Cabo Verde, an island nation off the African coast.
An archipelago of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean some 385 miles offshore from Senegal, Cabo Verde was uninhabited until the mid-1400s, when it was colonized by Portuguese sailors who brought enslaved Africans with them and forced them to work the land.