Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago
نویسندگان
چکیده
The bacteria Yersinia pestis is the etiological agent of plague and has caused human pandemics with millions of deaths in historic times. How and when it originated remains contentious. Here, we report the oldest direct evidence of Yersinia pestis identified by ancient DNA in human teeth from Asia and Europe dating from 2,800 to 5,000 years ago. By sequencing the genomes, we find that these ancient plague strains are basal to all known Yersinia pestis. We find the origins of the Yersinia pestis lineage to be at least two times older than previous estimates. We also identify a temporal sequence of genetic changes that lead to increased virulence and the emergence of the bubonic plague. Our results show that plague infection was endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000 years before any historical recordings of pandemics.
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Bubonic plaque is caused by Yersinia pestis, a deadly pathogen that left deep scars in human history. Rasmussen et al. (2015) have now retrieved Y. pestis genomes from 2,800- to 5,000-year-old human teeth, shedding new light on origins of the strain that brought Black Death to Europe 670 years ago.
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