Although camel breeds have been historically important in the ability of pastoral populations to adapt and better exploit the desert environment, with increasing commoditization of camels and camel products, there is the risk that some locally adapted camel breeds may be diminishing in population and slowly disappearing (Blanc and Ennesser 1989).
The opportunity for catch-up may have been diminished in this population studied in the aftermath of World War II, causing early deficits to track into adulthood.
Slatkin [ 43] demonstrated that the probability of detecting linkage disequilibrium between (neutral) loci in mtDNA is greatly diminished in a population that recently expanded.
In all three screens, the mutants of interest diminished in the population but could be revealed by detecting the loss of their associated barcodes by DNA arrays [ 3, 5, 6].
Interestingly, comparison of cytokine production by the T responder population revealed that it was only the frequencies of IFN-γ+ (not TNF-α+ or GM-CSF+) cells that were diminished in this population when iTreg cells were also administered (Fig. 4E G).
This is in agreement with other studies [ 7, 29] and probably reflects the fact that health status of people suffering from chronic respiratory diseases rapidly deteriorates during hot periods or that the capacity to cope with heat stress is generally diminished in particular population subgroups, such as the elderly [ 30, 31].
In contrast, these responses would be absent or diminished in healthy populations, who would clear Pneumocystis from the lungs more quickly.
As first pointed out by Kimura (1967), the magnitude of indirect selection opposing mutator alleles is greatly diminished in sexual populations because the statistical associations with induced deleterious mutations are rapidly removed by recombination.
It is clear, from data here and elsewhere, that the IgM response is severely diminished in the older population.
Still, it is a possibility that the response to ATP also is diminished in an elderly population, possibly to a minor extent, because the dose-response in young healthy subjects may not be linear for the dose interval under study, hampering data extrapolation and direct comparison (6).
