Abstract

Citation:Drenos F, Kirkwood TBL (2010) Selection on Alleles Affecting Human Longevity and Late-Life Disease: The Example of Apolipoprotein E. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10022. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022

Editor:Matt Kaeberlein, University of Washington, United States of America

Received:January 14, 2010;Accepted:March 13, 2010;Published: April 2, 2010

Copyright: © 2010 Drenos, Kirkwood. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding:The authors thank the Dr Hadwen Trust for financial support (http://www.drhadwentrust.org/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Evidence points towards the existence of a strong heritable component of human longevity[1],[2]. Around a quarter to a third of the variability of lifespan can be attributed to the action of genes[3],[4],[5],[6],[7]. One of the best examples of a gene affecting survival in old age is the apolipoprotein E geneAPOE. Situated on human chromosome 19 at locus 19q13.32 (http://genome.ucsc.edu/, assembly (hg18)), theAPOE gene is 3.6 kb long containing four exons and coding for a 317 amino-acid polypeptide that after cleavage gives rise to a 299 amino-acid long mature protein[8],[9]. Apolipoprotein E (APO E) is a member of a diverse family of carrier proteins specializing in lipoprotein particle formation, secretion, transport, binding and metabolism[10]. APO E is synthesized in many different regions of the body such as the liver, brain (primarily astrocytes), skin, macrophages and steroidogenic organs[11].

APO E has three major and more than thirty minor isoforms, the latter being mostly linked with disease. The three common alleles are epsilon (ε) 2, 3 and 4 producing three homozygous (ε2/ε2,ε3/ε3 andε4/ε4) and three heterozygous (ε2/ε3,ε3/ε4 andε2/ε4) genotypes[12]. The difference between the alleles lies at two amino acid residues 112 and 158; with the most common alleleε3 having cysteine and arginine at these residues, respectively, whileε2 has cysteine andε4 arginine at both locations[9]. Carriers of different alleles show differences in the incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD), peripheral atherosclerosis, Alzheimer disease, possibly stroke and even ability to recover from trauma[11],[13],[14],[15],[16]. The underlying mechanism for the action of the gene involves an inter-domain interaction between the amino- and carboxyl- terminals of the protein, producing isoform-specific lipoprotein preferences such that E2 and E3 protein isoforms bind preferentially to HDL (the “good” cholesterol), while the E4 isoform shows a preference for VLDL[17]. The APO E2 isoform is defective in binding the LDL receptor, although it retains its ability to interact with LDL-receptor-related protein and other related receptors[11]. A small number ofε2 homozygotes suffer from a condition known as type III hyperlipoproteinemia, characterized by accumulation of cholesterol-rich remnant lipoproteins due to incomplete catabolism of chylomicrons and VLDL, leading to premature atherosclerosis. The fact that although 90% of the patients areε2 homozygotes, but only 5% of theε2 homozygotes suffer from the condition, suggests that further factors are required for the phenotypic expression of the condition[18],[19].

Generally in Caucasian populations survival to advanced age is more likely for carriers of theε2 allele than forε3 homozygotes and less likely for carriers of theε4 allele[20],[21],[22],[23],[24]. Theε4 allele is strongly associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)[14],[25],[26],[27],[28], while for theε2 allele there is some, though weaker, evidence for a protective effect[29],[30]. The APOE polymorphism, has also been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), which is the commonest form of senile dementia[31],[32]. With theε4 allele shown, in a number of studies, to be associated with both familial and sporadic forms of the disease, causing higher incidence and earlier age of onset, and affecting its pathology and rate of progression[33],[34]. Normal age-associated cognitive decline, and mild cognitive impairment and the risk of its conversion to AD have also been repeatedly associated with the presence of theε4 allele[35].

One of the major ideas in the evolutionary theory of ageing[36] is the suggestion that, because the force of natural selection declines with age, alleles with deleterious effects seen only at older ages can reach higher frequencies than those that have their effects earlier in life[37]. Therefore, if a gene exerts an effect only after the end of the reproductive phase of the lifespan it has been thought unlikely that it could have been subject to significant direct selection pressure, and this would seem to be the case for genes affecting late-life diseases such as AD and CHD[38],[39]. Nevertheless, the worldwide abundance ofε3, as compared toε4 which, from studies in non-human primates appears to be the ancestral allele[40],[41], suggests that selection has acted upon these alleles. Here, we use a simulation approach based on the known risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) to examine the hypothesis that the evolution of theAPOE gene was, and still is, driven by its role in lipid metabolism and its subsequent effects on health.

Methods

Results

Starting withAPOE genotype frequencies of 1.7%ε2ε2, 11.6%ε2ε3, 55.8%ε3ε3, 1.9%ε2ε4, 25.1%ε3ε4, and 3.9%ε4ε4 and modifiable risk factor distributions as reported in Millen et al[44] and Stampfer et al[46], and assuming the same population distribution between males and females, the mean life expectancy at birth for the simulated individual was 75.7 years with females having 5.4 years longer expected lifespan than males. The differences in mortality betweenAPOE genotype classes as fitted in the model can be seen inFigure 1, withε2 carriers living 1 (OR 0.9) year more, andε4 carriers living 1.2 (OR 1.13) years less, than theε3ε3 reference genotype. Infigure 2, the curves obtained when the interaction between genotype and diet was considered can be seen, whiletable 1 has the calculated relative risk for each combination of diet andAPOE genotype. For the force of natural selection on theAPOE gene, we observed a positive selection for theε2 (mean frequency change per generation 3.352×10⁻⁴, 95% CI 2.661×10⁻⁴ to 4.043×10⁻⁴) andε3 (mean 2.785×10⁻⁴ 95% CI 1.809×10⁻⁴ to 3.761×10⁻⁴) alleles againstε4 (mean −6.137×10⁻⁴ 95% CI −6.946×10⁻⁴ to −5.327×10⁻⁴), with theε2 frequency increasing slightly more rapidly than that forε3, although there was no significant difference between them (Figure 3).

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Figure 1. Differences in the distribution of mortality for the threeAPOE genotype classes.

These are estimated using a proportional hazard model as described in themethods. Theε2 carriers have an OR of 0.9 and survive a year more than theε3ε3 carriers. In contrast,ε4 carriers have a decreased lifespan of 1.2 years due to an OR of 1.13 compared to the reference genotype.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.g001

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Figure 2. Inferred interaction betweenAPOE genotype and diet.

Diet categories are considered on an integer scale from 1 to 5 with Heart Healthy, Light Eating, Wine and Moderate Eating, High Fat, and Empty Calorie clusters[44],[45]. We assumed that for a hypothetical diet category 0 there is no distinction in risk between the genotypes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.g002

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Figure 3. Change in frequency of the threeAPOE alleles with each generation.

The long dash line represents theε3 allele, the solid line theε4 and the short dash line theε2. The squares, stars and triangles points represent the 95% Confidence Intervals of theε3,ε4 andε2 frequencies respectively.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.g003

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Table 1. Calculated relative risk for each combination of diet category as described by Miller et al (2001) andAPOE genotype.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.t001

Considering that only a fraction of the population will suffer fromAPOE related diseases, a variant of the model with 30% of the total mortality attributed to CVD was also tested. Again, the results pointed to a positive selection of theε2 andε3 alleles (ε2 mean 0.846×10⁻⁴, 95% CI 0.497×10⁻⁴ to 1.195×10⁻⁴;ε3 mean 0.846×10⁻⁴, 95% CI 0.316×10⁻⁴ to 1.377×10⁻⁴) and a negative selection for theε4 allele (mean −1.692×10⁻⁴, 95% CI −2.140×10⁻⁴ to −1.244×10⁻⁴) which, as expected, was approximately one third of the change observed previously.

We performed a number of simulation runs with a variety of different starting conditions both to test the sensitivity of the model and analyse the likely changes under different lifestyle choices. The description of all the simulation variants used with their mean life expectancy at birth can be seen intable 2. The changes in the distribution of the modifiable risk factors explored, except the eradication of smoking, were relatively modest and considered possible to occur, if not already present in certain subgroups of western populations. It is important to note the unexpected decrease in mean lifespan when heavy alcohol consumption is lowered and the slight increase in longevity when non- and very light drinkers decrease. This effect is due to the U-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and health and the re-arrangement of the population distribution across the categories of risk.

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Table 2. The simulated average lifespan in years of each variant considered in the absence of non APO E related mortality.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.t002

The estimates for the mean frequency change for eachAPOE allele per generation, under all the different models considered assuming at the same time that only 30% of the population is affected by anyAPOE related diseases, are presented intable 3. As can be seen in the table, the selection against theε4 allele and the increase in the frequency of theε3 andε2 alleles are robust and remained significant under all the different versions of the simulation. A notable exception was the loss of significance for the increase of theε3 frequency when the effect of smoking is removed from the population (mean 0.259×10⁻⁴, 95% CI −0.057×10⁻⁴ to 0.574×10⁻⁴). The extreme change of removing all smokers in the population, while in the same time leaving the percentage of CVD associated mortality at 30%, reaches the statistical power limits of our current simulation to observe significance for the selection of theε3 allele in a population of 20,000. For such extreme cases, a corresponding change should also be made to the mortality schedule and the fraction of the population affected by that change.

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Table 3. Mean change of the frequency of each allele for the variants of the model used together with the 95% CI of the standard error of the mean in each case.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010022.t003

Discussion

We have shown that under certain environmental conditions, such as those often found in Western populations, theAPOE gene is likely to be under the action of natural selection. According to the results obtained, theε2 andε3 alleles are increasing with each successive generation at the expense of theε4 allele, which is slowly being removed from the population. The selection against theε4 allele was found to be robust, despite changes to the initial conditions of the simulation. We failed to find any significant difference between the increase in frequency of theε2 andε3 alleles, denoting their very similar effects on survival. This accords with meta-analysis studies which have found it difficult to identify any statistically significant risk differences between the carriers ofε2 allele and the referenceε3ε3 genotype, unless a large number of cases is available, mainly due to the low frequency ofε2 in the populations considered[15].

Despite the difficulty in observing and measuring the force of natural selection as revealed by change of allele frequencies in specific polymorphisms, especially in humans, alternative methods are available to obtain evidence for its action indirectly.APOE seems to be one of the least variable human genes studied, despite the average neutral mutation rate[59]. Comparing the chimpanzee and humanAPOE genes, revealed thatε4 is probably the ancestral allele[59]. Indeed, most great apes carry only theε4 allele, although a change of arginine to threonine at position 61 gives this isoform an affinity similar to the humanε3[40],[60],[61]. It is unclear when the humanε4 allele arose, but a comparison between coding changes in orthologous genes in five species (Mouse, Rat, Dog, Chimpanzee and Human) showed positive selection forAPOE along the hominid lineage[62]. Using the haplotypes defining the three genotypes in a coalescent model, Fullerton et al[59] proposed thatε3 diverged from theε4 haplotype around 200,000 years ago and thatε3 is showing evidence of increasing in frequency, relative toε4. Assuming a constant selective pressure and a generation time of ∼20 years, given anε3 frequency of around 0.75, a very simple calculation shows that the required increase ofε3 per generation is 7.5×10⁻⁵, close to the order of magnitude predicted from the simulation for the current change of the allele frequency. Using a similar argument, we can further propose that sinceε2 andε3 alleles seem to be under a similar pressure from natural selection in our simulation andε2 has a lower frequency in human populations,ε2 arose later thanε3. Again, analysis ofAPOE haplotypes using a reduced median network revealed thatε2 was derived from theε3 allele within the last 80,000 years[59].

Assuming a simple and uniform selection pressure onAPOE is rather over simplistic. Current theories suggest a two step evolution of the locus, one to explain the early evolution of the human alleles and a second step to account for their current global frequencies. Despite the very sparse evidence for both, and their rather conflicting views for the selection pressures applied, the proposed mechanisms are interesting and reveal the importance ofAPOE in human evolution. Finch and Stanford[63] and Finch and Sapolsky[60] suggested thatAPOE is a “meat adaptive” gene that permitted increased consumption of animal tissue during hominid evolution while conferring resistance to the associated risks such as hypercholesterolemia and infections, allowing for the extension of human lifespan. In their view, this increase in meat eating provided humans with a solution to seasonal deficits of micronutrients. In addition, relatively safe consumption of nutrient dense meat is believed to have lead to an increase of body size, without restricting activity, and conferred the extra energy required for the cerebral expansion of early humans[64],[65]. On the other hand, the frequencies of the three common alleles vary widely between populations of different ethnic backgrounds. In generalε3 is globally the most common allele, with Africans having the lowest allele frequency (≤70%) compared to Caucasians (70–80%) and East Asians (≥80%)[66]. In Europe, and between populations of Caucasian descent, there is a north-to-south gradient of decreasingε4 frequency opposite to the spread of agriculture[67],[68]. This has led Corbo and Scacchi[69] to suggest thatAPOE is a thrifty gene, with theε4 allele being advantageous under seasonal periods of starvation, due to its elevating effect of cholesterol which would otherwise be too low, but detrimental in areas where carbohydrates were readily available, such as those with a long history of agriculture, thus the north-to-south pattern observed in Europe. Doubts have been raised about the lack of seasonal starvation in food producing societies[70], while the hypothesised selection forε4 in pre-agricultural times is opposite to the one suggested by Finch and Sapolsky[60],[63].

Although it is clear that variation in theAPOE locus has been, and probably still is, under the control of selection, the fact that its main effects are beyond the reproductive lifespan of humans, has posed an interesting puzzle for the mechanisms through which selection is applied. Finch and Sapolsky[60],[71] suggested that the spread ofε3 in human populations is due to the effect of a mother's late survival on the fitness of her offspring. The grand-mother hypothesis, as it is known, is centred on the idea that the mother-child food sharing seen among hunter-gatherers may allow post-reproductive grandmothers to enhance their daughters' fertility, thus elevating their own fitness and increasing the selection for long postmenopausal lifespan[72],[73],[74]. Finch and Sapolsky[60],[71] argued that this evolutionary advantage will have caused selection for anAPOE allele that will have delayed neuropathology and mortality even if its effects are evident later in life (for counterarguments see[75],[76]). Charlesworth[77], on the other hand, proposed thatAPOE is an example of balanced polymorphism with the variation in the locus maintained due to the antagonistic effects of the alleles, where increased late life risk is offset by advantages in younger ages, in accordance with the antagonistic pleiotropy theory of ageing. Martin[76] extended the idea of antagonistic pleiotropy forAPOE suggesting that theε4 allele could be advantageous in cases of infections with pathogens requiring host lipids for survival. Parasites likeTrypanosome brucei not able to carry out de novo liposynthesis may depend upon host LDL for acquisition of lipids, with the high affinity ofε4 for some lipids actually hindering their uptake by the pathogen. Our model indicates that, although these hypotheses might work at a secondary level, they are not strictly necessary to explain the selection ofAPOE alleles. Thedirect effect ofAPOE on the mortality or morbidity of the population is sufficient, at least in contemporary Western populations, to produce a selection differential between the three alleles. The simulation predicts that theε3 andε2 alleles are driven towards fixation, a conclusion supported by the Fullerton et al[59] observations for the mutation at site 3937, characterising theε3 allele.

This simulation study is considering the pressure of natural selection on a population with demographics equal, or similar, to what is found in contemporary populations. It will be wrong to extrapolate our results in order to interpret the early evolution ofAPOE, since modern populations experience a very different environment compared to our early ancestors. Nevertheless, our basic conclusion that certain genetic polymorphisms, such asAPOE, exhibiting their main effect later in life can still be under the action of natural selection, still holds. Interestingly, analysis of a Danish cohort of individual born between 1895 and 1899, showed that carriers of the ε4 allele had increased early mortality compared to those carrying the ε2 allele as suggested by our simulation[78]. It is currently unclear how far back our results can be considered as valid, but given the early age (>35 years of age) that theAPOE effects on mortality can be seen in the Danish cohort, we believe that this can extend in our recent history.

In our simulation we cannot account for any pleiotropic effects ofAPOE. We described the effects of the gene on lifespan only through its relation to elevated risk for CVD.APOE has a much wider role than just lipid metabolism, including immunoregulation and susceptibility to infections[60],[79],[80],[81]. We chose not to include these effects within the simulation since reliable quantitative data concerning their impact on lifespan do not exist.APOE, though its role in steroidogenesis, has also been shown to influence fertility in pre-industrial populations[82], old Italians (>80 years of age)[83] and North European males[84], with theε2 carriers having less children. The small number ofε2 subjects together with the many cultural and socioeconomic factors affecting current human reproduction makes it difficult to say if this effect is indeed real and relevant in the model used. A limitation of our model was the lack of data for the interaction between theAPOE genotypes and each of the modifiable risk factors considered, which forced us to use a very approximate method to calculate the unknown interactions. Further epidemiological work is required to elucidate the precise quantitative relationship of theAPOE gene with the parameters of the model so that the predictions can be made more accurate. While, for simplicity, we assumed that the rest of the risk factors are independent of each other, although it has been recognised that these tend to cluster, to some degree, in individuals of high risk[85].

Despite some limitations, our results indicate that although the main effect ofAPOE is seen after the end of the reproductive lifespan of humans, the relatively rare events of early mortality or morbidity are enough to produce selection against theε4 allele. Considering these findings in the light of the evolutionary theory of ageing and longevity, particularly as regards the ‘mutation accumulation’ of late acting deleterious alleles, we can identify an important perspective on this concept. Since most longevity-associated genes, such asAPOE, will cause a distribution around a mean for the corresponding mortality, evolution will rarely, if ever, manage to push deleterious gene action entirely beyond the reach of selection, although as envisaged by Medawar there will be a continual selection pressure to postpone such action to later and later ages. The gradual postponement of the detrimental gene effect will take place simultaneously in a wide array of mortality associated genes. Any single mortality distribution exposed significantly more often to the action of selection will be moved towards older ages faster, until it reaches a balance with all the other detrimental genotypes. This process will continue to drive the longevity of the organism until the age-related mortality becomes non-significant in relation to the age-independent mortality. In this respect the evolution of longevity, although based on selection of individual genes, is more of an evolutionarily coordinated transfiguration of the whole genome to achieve the maximum lifespan in the given conditions as hypothesized by Hamilton[38].

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FD TBLK. Performed the experiments: FD. Analyzed the data: FD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: FD. Wrote the paper: FD TBLK.

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