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City Living Promoted Resistance to Infectious Disease

城市生活促进增强传染病抵抗能力

City living has obviously influenced human culture—as have often been noted, how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree'? But urban life may have also influenced human genes, making the descendants of ancient city dwellers more resistant to disease. That's according to a study in the journal Evolution.

城市生活对人类文化有着明显影响——如常所说：你怎能在见过巴黎的繁华之后仍能安心于田园？但是，根据《进化》杂志刊登的一项研究，城市生活也可影响人类基因，使得古城居民的后代对疾病更具抵抗力。

The researchers started from the premise that densely populated cities would be good places for infectious diseases, which could spread easily from person to person. That situation should have set up selection pressure for the ability to survive such infections.

研究人员首先假定，人口密集的城市是传染性疾病的温床，使人际之间的疾病传染更为容易。当然，这一环境必须建立能够抵抗这类传染病并存活下来的选择压力。

The scientists sampled the DNA of 17 populations from Africa, Asia and Europe, including longtime urbanites—like Italians, Turks and Iranians—and traditionally rural or nomadic groups, like Malawians or the Saami people of northern Scandinavia.

科学家们采集了来自非洲、亚洲、欧洲等地区17个群体的DNA，这些群体包括长期生活在城市的居民，如意大利人、土耳其人、伊朗人，以及传统农村或游牧部落里的人，如马拉维人、斯堪的纳维亚半岛北部的萨米人，等等。

Then the researchers zeroed in on a gene variant that offers protection against diseases like tuberculosis or leprosy. After controlling for any shared ancestry between the groups, they indeed found that the protective gene was significantly more common in cultures with a long history of urban settlement. Which may be some comfort next time someone's sneezing near you on the subway.

然后，科学家们将全部注意力放在一种可抵抗结核病或麻风病之类的疾病的基因变体上。在对两两组群中任何拥有共同祖先的组进行控制调整后，科学家们确实发现了保护性基因显然在有着悠久历史的城市聚居区的文明当中更为普遍。这一发现或许会让你下次在地铁里遇到有人在你身边打喷嚏时心里倍感安慰。

—Christopher Intagliata

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