Mismatch: Human Origins and Modern Disease

Summary:
The human body is a mosaic of features with an enormous range of evolutionary ages. This Symposium covers that range by discussing the impacts on health of vulnerabilities that originated from 1.5 billion to 2 million years ago. Multicellularity (1.5 bya) made tissues, organs, large size, and cancer possible. The vertebrate immune system (450 mya), which protects us against rapidly evolving pathogens, has inflammation and autoimmune disease built into it. Lactation (200 mya), which supports infant growth and disease resistance, made possible breast cancer, and when breast milk is not used, the risks of allergies, obesity, and metabolic disorders increase. Menstruation (40 mya) improved the quality control of defective offspring while making women vulnerable to dysmenorrhea and premenstrual syndrome. Highly invasive placentas (15 mya) improved fetal nutrition and growth, but the ability of those cells to invade foreign tissue opened the door to metastatic cancer. Since we diverged from other primates (6 mya), our aging and our reproduction got uniquely human signatures, and while bipedalism allowed us to run fast and handle objects with our hands, it brought with it problems with childbirth, back and joint pain, and diseases of the spine. While social parenting (5 mya) made possible shorter interbirth intervals and a new ontogenetic phase (childhood), it was accompanied by babies fatter at birth and harder to deliver and may be involved in menopause. When we became hairless (2 mya) and got abundant sweat glands (2 mya), we could run far and work hard in hot weather, but that made us vulnerable to skin cancers. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle (2 mya) expanded our microbiome, with new elements playing an immunoregulatory role, but it made women vulnerable to polycystic ovarian syndrome. It became the reference lifestyle for the mismatch diseases of civilization.

Event Sessions:

Speakers	Session
Pascal Gagneux Stephen Stearns	Welcome & Opening Remarks Welcome by CARTA Executive Co-Director, Pascal Gagneux. Opening remarks by Event Co-chair, Stephen Stearns.
Steve Frank	Cancer is normal development spun out of control Cancer is the origin of a novel tissue that attracts resources, spreads beyond boundaries, avoids normal controls, and escapes immunity. A novel tissue arises in the same way that bodies are built from nothing, by development. Cancer is normal development spun out of control. It is the great plasticity and power of development, without the overarching controls that guide normal development toward an integrated adult form. Instead, whenever a newly developed kind of tissue acquires the ability... read more
Andrea Graham	The vertebrate immune system: inflammation, autoimmune diseases
Deena Emera	Is there a point to periods? The Evolutionary history of menstruation and implications for women's health Menstruation is the cyclical shedding of the endometrium triggered by falling progesterone levels. Menstruation is a rare trait found in less than 2% of mammals and likely evolved independently at least 4 times. Why do some mammals menstruate while most do not? The leading hypothesis is that menstruation occurs as a nonadaptive consequence of spontaneous decidualization of the endometrium, which evolved to increase biosensoring of embryo quality. While the trait of spontaneous decidualization (... read more
Günter Wagner	Highly invasive placentas ca. 15 mya: metastasis, rewiring by endoviruses The rate of cancer and cancer malignancy differ greatly among mammalian species. The placental – maternal interface is also highly variable between placental mammals. Here I want to discuss recent advances that suggest that there is a causal connection between the evolution of placental biology and the biology and rate of cancer malignancy. Cancer is a complex disease with different stages from the origin of the primary tumor to the establishment of secondary tumors in other organs than that... read more
Genevieve Housman	Primate skeletal gene regulation: Risks of human skeletal disease, specifically, osteoarthritis
Martin Häusler	Bipedalism ca 6 mya: problems with childbirth, back and joint pain, diseases of the spine, all the consequences of mismatch when mobility decreases
Barry Bogin	What makes people care? An anthropologist’s view of Biocultural Reproduction — the human style of hyper-cooperation The essence of Being Human is the practice of Biocultural Reproduction (BCR).  BCR is defined as the set of marriage and kinship based rules for extra-maternal cooperation in the production, feeding, and care of offspring. Human evolution theory needs to explain how people successfully combined a vastly extended period of offspring dependency and delayed reproduction with helpless newborns — with large heads and much body fat (even with problems giving birth) -- a short duration of breast-... read more
Justin Sonnenburg Erica Sonnenburg	Hunter-gatherer lifestyle: vulnerability to polycystic ovarian syndrome, expansion of important elements of the microbiota with immunoregulatory roles (Old Friends), possible reference lifestyle for much of the mismatch diseases of civilization
Caleb Finch	The three smokes and other exposomes in the anthropocene
All Speakers Pascal Gagneux	Question & Answer Session and Closing Remarks Question and answer session with all speakers. Closing remarks by CARTA Executive Co-Director, Pascal Gagneux.