The people of Northern Ireland carry an unusual mutation in the AIP gene, leading to the development of gigantism, which explains why Ulster is often called "the land of giants," according to an article published in the journal Human Mutation.
“And although these people look to the general public as particularly strong, large and generally healthy people, the excess of growth hormones and IGF-1 protein lead to extremely negative consequences for them. What makes us admire them ultimately shortens their life and leads to death,”said Anthony Heaney of the University of California at Los Angeles (USA).
Heaney and his colleagues, led by Marta Korbonits from Queen Mary University in London (UK), found that approximately one in 150 Ulster residents in northern Ireland carry a mutation associated with the development of gigantism, studying the DNA of hundreds of people suffering from acromegaly.
Acromegaly is an uncommon disease that causes overgrowth of tissues in the arms, legs, skull, and face during adulthood due to a malfunctioning pituitary gland that causes it to release excessive amounts of growth hormone. The development of acromegaly leads to deformities of the limbs and face when onset in adolescence, and to the development of gigantism in childhood.
According to Korbonitz, her past studies have shown that gigantism and acromegaly are associated with a breakdown in the AIP gene, leading to the development of tumors in the pituitary gland and uncontrolled production of growth hormones in this gland.
Studying the genomes of patients with this disease, Korbonitz, Irish by birth, drew attention to the fact that many of them carried typically "Irish" DNA traits. At that moment, she recalled a large number of legends and tales in Ireland about giants, as well as many examples of famous giant people who lived on the territory of the "Emerald Isle" in the 18th and 19th centuries.
All this prompted scientists to check how often one of the mutations in the AIP gene, which they found, is found among the inhabitants of Ireland in general and some regions of the country in particular. To do this, biologists analyzed the DNA of more than two thousand residents of the provincial regions of the island, as well as almost a thousand residents of the environs of Belfast, the capital of the British part of Ireland and the adjacent districts of Ulster, a historical region in the north of Ireland.
This study revealed an interesting phenomenon - it turned out that all carriers of this mutation, which are really very common in Ireland, are concentrated exclusively in Ulster, and are almost never found in other regions of the island. Here, every 150 inhabitants of the region is a carrier of this mutation in the AIP gene.
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All of them, even more interestingly, turned out to be the descendants of one person, the “original giant” who lived on the island about 2.5 thousand years ago, even before the time of Roman rule in the British Isles. Curiously, this version of the gene was possessed by one of the famous Irish giants of the late 18th century, Charles Byrne, who was born in Ulster in 1761, while another giant, Cornelius Magrath, who lived in the south of Ireland, did not.
The prevalence of mutations in AIP in the north of Ireland and the associated gigantism, according to scientists, could serve as the basis for the origin of legends and tales about giants living on the northern shores of the island. It is possible that many other legends of the peoples of the world originated in a similar way, scientists conclude.
