From my friend regarding the thread on APOE-4
 [I hope she joins this blog soon because she's obviously done some homework...] -

"Hello Diane,
    There are hundreds or thousands of academic references to the ancestral APOE-4, and many  thousands on diet, LDL and APOE4-, so I am not sure where to begin, and I am sure there are hundreds of other articles that are better.  But here are a couple:

    Ann Human Genetics, 1999, July, 63(pt 4 ):  301-10 (on the ancestral part, and also referring to the prevalence of the more recent APOE-3 which probably took hold first in the agricultural Mediterranean).  

     Another reference, but there are hundreds of other articles that might be better::  Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology 2010: 23  pp 213-   (Berkis et al)

    I suggest just googling "APOE-4 ancestral" or similar term, tons of articles will come up.  (or any other search engine).

    For info just on APOE-4, just google it or look in Wikipedia for a summary. 

    For info on population distribution of APOE alleles, just google that.

    Also, why not look on paleohacks.com<http://paleohacks.com/>?  I noticed there was a discussion on..."should people have their APOE-4 status checked before starting the Pale diet? 

   I would suggest that everyone should know something about APOE-4 anyway as so many people do have a copy---and it is relevant to neurologic injury which is common in sports, and other activities.  
   Well, that is for starters.  The above are not the best articles for general basic education but people can get a lot off the internet that might be more readable or meet their needs better."

This was in response to Ron's query:

"I wonder if your friend could provide a reference for her statement that
"The ancestral gene in humans is APOE-4 which earlier humans carried two
copies of.  (The recent predominant gene is two copies of APOE-3 which just
evolved a few thousand years ago and which most people have now."

Diane H.