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08 Jun 2003
There's a very interesting article in Nature this week by Jared Diamond about type 2 diabetes and the evolution of 'thrifty genes'. The idea is that the genes predisposing people to this form of diabetes persist in the population because they have some selective advantage. One hypothesis is that these genes have an advantage in 'feast-famine' conditions, allowing people to gain weight rapidly and lay down a lot of fat in infrequent periods of plenty so that they are then more likely to survive the subsequent famine.
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