using a bug that is believed to have existed and evolved in human stomachs for millions of years, scientists have unearthed fresh evidence to support the hypothesis that Indians and Europeans had the same ancestors. Their finding lends support to the assumption of a possible gene flow into India with the arrival of the Indo-Aryans. It also bolsters the view that Neolithic practices and languages came to India from the Fertile Crescent, a historical crescent-shape region in the Middle East.

A team from the Centre for dna Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (cdfd) in Hyderabad along with French and Italian scientists analysed the gene pool of the Indian strains of the human gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori and compared it with hundreds of isolates from geographic regions across the world. The results showed that the Indian H pylori bacteria belong to the sub-population hpEurope and, therefore, had a shared European ancestry.

"Further, we did not find any other sub-populations such as hpAfrica or hpEastAsian, in our survey of Indian strains, suggesting that the hpEurope type bacteria enjoyed a special survival advantage in Indian stomachs to out-compete any endogenous strains existing then,' says Niyaz Ahmed, cdfd staff scientist who conceived the study.

The study, with Deccan College of Medical Sciences and Allied Hospitals, Hyderabad, University of Sassari, Italy, and Universit