Plagued for millennia: The complex transmission and ecology of prehistoric Yersinia pestis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25250/thescbr.brk723

Keywords:

Plague, Yersinia pestis, human disease, Stone Age, ancient DNA

Abstract

The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis is known as one of the most infamous and deadliest pathogens in human history. Using archaeogenetics we reconstructed 17 ancient genomes from the late Neolithic and Bronze Age in Eurasia to explore its early diversity and evolution. Our data suggest ecological differences between these prehistoric strains and modern as well as other pandemic Y. pestis strains.

Author Biographies

Aida Andrades Valtueña, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Postdoctoral Researcher

Gunnar U. Neumann, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

PhD Student

Alexander Herbig, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Research Group Leader

Original article reference

Andrades Valtueña, A., Neumann, G. U., Spyrou, M. A., Musralina, L., Aron, F., Beisenov, A., Belinskiy, A. B., Bos, K. I., Buzhilova, A., Conrad, M., Djansugurova, L. B., Dobeš, M., Ernée, M., Fernández-Eraso, J., Frohlich, B., Furmanek, M., Hałuszko, A., Hansen, S., Harney, É., … Herbig, A. (2022). Stone Age Yersinia pestis genomes shed light on the early evolution, diversity, and ecology of plague. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(17). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116722119

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Published

2023-07-18

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 3 (2023): TheScienceBreaker

Section

Microbiology

License

Some rights reserved 2023 Aida Andrades Valtueña, Gunnar U. Neumann, Alexander Herbig

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.