The human body is made up of different blood groups, one of them being the ABO blood group, which facilitates blood transfusions. The ABO blood type was discovered in 1900 and 1901 at the University of Vienna by Karl Landsteiner while he was trying to understand why some blood transfusions cause death and why some can save patients. There are four genotypes associated with the ABO blood group: blood group A, blood group B, blood group AB, and blood group O. At the same time, there are two antigens and two antibodies that are responsible for each ABO blood group. For example, blood type A has the A antigen and the anti-B antibody, but does not have the A antigen or the anti-A antibody. Blood group B has the B antigen and anti-A antibody but not the A antigen or anti-A antibody. Blood group AB has both A and B antigens, but neither anti-A nor B antibodies, and blood group O has a combination of antibodies to A and B, but neither A nor B antigen. These antigens and antibodies give you an advantage or disadvantage depending on where you are in the world and what disease you may or may not be fighting. Selecting specific ABO blood types can play a role in determining which diseases you are protected against and which diseases you are susceptible to. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayThe article The Relationship Between Blood Types and Disease written by David J Anstee shows how blood types A, B and O can have advantages and disadvantages depending on the type of disease you are fighting, for example, the Infectious Diseases and Selection of ABO Blood Group Antigens section describes the role of genes in coding proteins to create that type of blood group. For example, there is a gene that encodes a glycosyltransferase, which ultimately transfers N-acetyl D-galactosamine (group A) or D-galactose (group B) to the non-reducing ends of the glycans of glycoproteins and glycolipids ( 2-5). The O blood group is formed from the inactivation of the A1 1 glycosyltransferase gene, and the non-reducing ends of the corresponding glycans, which express the H antigen to the blood group. In addition to red blood cells, ABH antigens are also expressed in body fluids and tissues and, as noted, loss of a specific protein called A/B transferase can be harmful to patients with blood type O because it carries out most of the functions involved. transfer of lipids and proteins (4-12). Another important disease that targets individuals belonging to blood groups A, B and AB rather than blood group O is arterial and venous thromboembolism, also known as VTE. Now the real question is why this particular disease affects people with blood types A, B and AB and not people with blood type O. Paragraph 2 states that people who do not have blood type O run a higher risk of contracting VTE because they have higher levels of two factors, von Willebrand factor (vWF) and factor VIII. It has been assumed that the risk of developing VTE is directly correlated with the levels of factors VIII and vWF, because many patients with blood group A2 recorded lower levels of these types and proteins and higher levels of these two factors are caused by blood group A2. The antigens, B and H being expressed on the N-glycans of vWF and this influences the half-life of the protein 10 hours for blood group O and 25 hours for blood group O.non-O blood group (1-12). In this example, having blood group A, B or AB would be a disadvantage while blood group O would offer an advantage against arterial and venous thromboembolism. Blood clot formation is another disease that has been studied because it provides a survival advantage to people with blood type O. Mutation factors such as factor V Leiden and prothrombin 20210G>A provide an explanation as to why for which they were found in the first white humans 20,000 to 24,000 years ago, at the end of the ice age. Studies show that factor V Leiden reduces the risk of hemorrhage (blood clots), other serious infections, and death during pregnancy (14-22). The article also states that blood type O was a common blood type throughout the world and the question that comes to my mind is why was blood type O so common throughout the world? Why weren't blood types A, B, and AB as common as blood type O? What made blood type O different and what did it have that blood types A, B, and AB lacked? According to paragraph 3, blood type O appeared in Africa before the first human migration and provides a selective advantage against malaria. Experimental support for this hypothesis was provided by Fry et al.18 and by Rowe et al.19 and this report showed a reduction in the rosette of Plasmodium falciparum isolates from Malian children with group O compared to blood groups no-O. Parasitized red blood cells form rosettes with uninfected red blood cells and adhere to the vascular endothelium, causing vasocclusion and severe disease (2-14). Based on this natural selection, natural selection also played a role in the environment of Africa, as blood type O activated survival genes against malaria to reduce its effect and avoid spreading to d other red blood cells that blood groups A, B and AB did not have. There are other examples of infectious diseases linked to the ABO phenotype, such as cholera and smallpox. Cholera is a type of infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with the bacteria Vibrio cholerae (World Health Organization 1-2) and according to the World Health Organization, it is responsible for 21,000 to 143,000 deaths worldwide. So why is this the case and which blood type is responsible for causing cholera and why? According to paragraph 4 of Infectious Diseases and Selection of ABO Blood Group Antigens, the O blood group phenotype is more likely to be prone to serious infections than the non-O blood group phenotypes. There is a low presence of blood group O and a greater presence of blood group B in the Ganges Delta of Bangladesh, which directly correlates with the selective pressure that cholera brings. This shows that the O allele is fixed in Asian populations and that the B allele drifted because the O allele in this case offered a cholera survival advantage. Forces such as genetic drift and the founder effect also explain why blood group allele frequencies change. For example, lines 6-18 of the fifth paragraph describe the high frequency of the HIV-1 resistance mutation CCR532 in Europe with protection against smallpox and the Black Death. However, the mutational change from the A allele to the O allele and the CCR532 mutation occurred earlier in human evolution before smallpox and plaque played a role in medieval times. Now this A to O mutation change could be due to the presence of malaria in Africa before the migration of early humans to Europe and the migration of early humans to Europemay also explain why allele frequencies are different in certain parts of the world. what each individual wears can also depend on various pathogens influencing it, for example in the article Pathogen-Driven Selection in the Human Genome written by Rachele Cagliani and Manuela Sironi, the section under A Wide Spectrum of Selection Targets talks about the expression of the ABO. Histo-blood group antigens on the gastrointestinal mucosa and in body secretions rely on the action of a fucosyltransferase, encoded by FUT2, a gene that is part of the Lewis blood group system. Both ABO and FUT2 have similar historical polymorphisms and long-lasting pressure that spreads worldwide due to selective pressure and infectious agents. For example, certain pathogens such as Plasmodium falciparum, Norwalk virus, Campylobacter jejuni, Helicobacter pylori and Vibrio cholerae are controlled by the ABO blood group and its associated secretor status. In many cases, vulnerability to a disease or the symptoms of that particular disease, as Rachele explains, is due to the fact that ABO antigens are used by attachment sites by specific molecules encoded by a pathogen, which in turn are subject to selective pressure for increase. ability to infect their host, as demonstrated with the babA gene of H. pylori which codes for the adhesin responsible for binding the ABO antigen. The function of ABO antigens as pathogen receptors is also thought to be the reason why other genes responsible for producing blood group phenotypes have been targeted by pathogen-driven selection in humans. (Rachel/Manuela, 2013). This shows how different blood types are selected to fight different types of pathogens. Natural selection is an evolutionary force that plays a role in determining what blood type you would have in any part of the world where a specific disease or diseases are present. The article Natural Selection and Infectious Diseases in Human Populations by Elinor K. Karlsson, Dominic P. Kwiatkowski, and Pardis C. Sabeti under the section Signatures of Negative Selection and Purifying Selection in lines 1-9 states: “The Negative selection eliminates existing detrimental variations. of a population. For example, when human populations in the Ganges Delta were confronted with pathogenic Vibrio cholerae, individuals with blood type O were at higher risk of dying from severe cholera, putting them at a severe reproductive disadvantage. Today, populations in the Ganges Delta, where cholera is endemic, have the lowest levels of blood type O in the world, consistent with negative selection. Purifying selection is the continuous elimination of deleterious alleles as they appear. Signatures of purifying selection include a decrease in overall diversity, a loss of functional variation, and an excess of rare alleles. Purifying selection is also manifested by a lack of substitutions between species, and this signal is used to identify functionally important and highly conserved genomic regions in cross-species comparisons (Elinor/Dominic/Pardis, 2014). In this example, in the Bangladesh region, blood type O is considered negative selection because it was the cause of many people dying from cholera and blood type O is now rarely seen in this region. Both natural selection and purifying selection played a role in helping to get rid of the alleles that make up the group.