The human body is made up of various blood groups, an important one being the ABO blood group, which helps in blood transfusions. The ABO blood type was discovered during the years 1900 and 1901 at the University of Vienna by Karl Landsteiner while trying to understand why some blood transfusions cause death and why some can save patients. There are four genotypes associated with ABO blood group and they are blood group A, blood group B, blood group AB and blood group O and along with that there are two antigens and two antibodies which are responsible for each ABO blood group. For example, blood group A has antigen A and anti-B antibody, but does not have antigen A and anti-A antibody. Blood group B has antigen B and anti-A antibody but not antigen A or antibody to A. Blood group AB has both antigens A and B but neither antibody to A nor B, while blood group O has a combination of antibodies to A and B but neither antigen 'antigen A nor B. These antigens and antibodies give you an advantage or a 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 from and which diseases you are susceptible to. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The article The Relationship Between Blood Types and Diseases written by David J Anstee shows how blood groups A, B and O can have advantages and disadvantages depending on the type of disease you are fighting, for example, the Diseases section infectious and blood group antigen selection ABO describes the role that genes have in coding proteins to form that certain type of blood group, for example, there is a gene that codes for a glycosyltransferase, which ends up transferring N-acetyl D-galactosamine (group A) or D-galactose (group B) at the non-reducing ends of glycans of glycoproteins and glycolipids (2-5). Blood group O is formed by inactivation of the glycosyltransferase A1 1 gene and the non-reducing ends of the corresponding glycans, which express the blood group H antigen. In addition to red blood cells, ABH antigens are also expressed in fluids and body tissues and, as already mentioned, the loss of a specific protein called transferase A/B can be harmful to patients who have blood type O because it provides most of the functions involving lipid and protein transfer (4- 12). Another major disease that affects individuals who have blood types A, B, and AB rather than O is arterial and venous thromboembolism also known as VTE. Now, the real question is why this particular disease affects people of blood types A, B, and AB and not people of blood type O. Paragraph 2 states that individuals who do not have blood type O are at greater risk of contracting VTE because they have higher levels of two factors, von Willebrand factor (vWF) and factor VIII. It has been hypothesized that the risk of developing VTE is directly related to the levels of factors VIII and vWF because many patients who have the A2 blood group record lower levels of these types and proteins and the higher levels of these two factors are caused by the group blood A, B and H expressed on the N-glycans of vWF and which influence the half-life of the protein of 10 hours for blood group O and 25 hours for non-O blood group (1-12). In this example, having blood type A, B or AB would be a disadvantage while blood type 0 would offer an advantage against arterial and venous thromboembolism. The formation ofblood clots is another disease that has been studied because it has provided a survival advantage to individuals who have blood type O. They provide mutation factors such as factor V Leiden and prothrombin 20210G>Aan explanation for why they were found in early white humans 20,000 to 24,000 years ago, when it was 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 around the world and the question that comes to mind is, why was blood type O so common around the world? Why weren't blood types A, B, and AB as common as blood type O? What distinguished blood group O and what did it have that blood groups A, B and AB lacked? According to paragraph 3, blood group O originated in Africa before human migration and offers a selective advantage against malaria. Experimental support for this hypothesis was provided by Fry et al.18 and Rowe et al.19 and this report showed reduced rosetting of Plasmodium falciparum isolates from Malian group O children compared to non-O blood groups. Parasitized RBCs form rosettes with uninfected RBCs and adhere to the vascular endothelium, causing vasocclusion and severe disease (2–14). Based on this natural selection it also played a role in the environment of Africa as blood group O activated survival genes against malaria to reduce its effect and avoid spreading to other red blood cells than blood groups A, B and AB had not. 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 the ingestion of food or water contaminated by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae (World Health Organization 1-2) and is responsible for 21,000 to 143,000 deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. So why is this the case and which blood type was responsible for causing cholera and why? According to paragraph 4 of the 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 occurrence of blood group O is a greater presence of blood group B in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh and this is directly related to the selective pressure brought by cholera. This shows that the O allele is fixed in Asian populations and the B allele has drifted because in this case the O allele offered a survival advantage to cholera. Forces such as genetic drift and the founder effect also explain why allele frequencies of blood groups 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 mutation 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 during the Middle Ages. Now, this mutation change from A to O could be due to the presence of malaria in Africa before the first humans migrated to Europe, and the migration of the first humans to Europe may also explain why the allele frequencies are different in some parts of the world. ABO blood groups and what each individual carries with them can also depend on various pathogens that influence them, 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 speaksof ABO expression Histological blood group antigens on the gastrointestinal mucosa and in body secretions rely on the action of a fucosyltransferase, which is 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 spread worldwide due to selective pressure and infectious agents. For example, some pathogens such as Plasmodium falciparum, Norwalk virus, Campylobacter jejuni, Helicobacter pylori and Vibrio cholerae is controlled by ABO blood type and its associated secretory status. In many cases, vulnerability to a disease or to the symptoms of that particular disease, as Rachele explains, is due to the fact that the ABO antigens are used at the attack sites by specific molecules encoded by the pathogen, which in turn are subjected to selective pressure to an increased ability to infect its host as demonstrated with the babA gene of H. pylori which encodes the adhesin responsible for binding to the ABO antigen. The function of ABO antigens as pathogen receptors is also believed 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 groups are selected to fight different types of pathogens. Natural selection is a force of evolution that plays a role in determining what blood type you would have anywhere in the world where one or more specific diseases are present. The article Natural selection and infectious diseases in human populations written by Elinor K. Karlsson, Dominic P. Kwiatkowski, and Pardis C. Sabeti in the section Signatures of negative selection and purifying selection in lines 1-9 states: “Negative selection eliminates variation harmful existing by a population. For example, when human populations in the Ganges River Delta encountered pathogenic Vibrio cholerae, blood group O individuals were at increased risk of dying from severe cholera, putting them at a severe reproductive disadvantage. Nowadays, populations of the cholera-endemic Ganges River Delta have the lowest rates of group O blood in the world, which is consistent with negative selection. Purifying selection is the continuous removal of deleterious alleles as they arise. Signs of purifying selection include a decrease in overall diversity, loss of functional variation, and an excess of rare alleles. Purifying selection also manifests as 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 Bangladesh region blood type O is considered to be a negative selection because it was the cause of death of many people due to cholera disease and now blood type O is rarely seen in that region. Both natural and purifying selection played a role in helping to get rid of the alleles that make up blood type O because they offered a disadvantage and not a survival advantage for people living in the cholera regions of the Ganges River Delta . first in the paper there are two things secretory and non-secretory that relate to ABO blood type and have roles to play. Now, the real question to ask is: what are these secretors and non-secretors, what do they do and what effect do they have on the ABO blood type? According to the article Importance of Secretor Status written by Dr. Peter J. D' Adamo, the gene that codes for your blood type is located on chromosome 9q34, but a.