Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago
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 a...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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Cell Press
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4644222/ |
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pubmed-4644222 |
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pubmed-46442222015-12-08 Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago Rasmussen, Simon Allentoft, Morten Erik Nielsen, Kasper Orlando, Ludovic Sikora, Martin Sjögren, Karl-Göran Pedersen, Anders Gorm Schubert, Mikkel Van Dam, Alex Kapel, Christian Moliin Outzen Nielsen, Henrik Bjørn Brunak, Søren Avetisyan, Pavel Epimakhov, Andrey Khalyapin, Mikhail Viktorovich Gnuni, Artak Kriiska, Aivar Lasak, Irena Metspalu, Mait Moiseyev, Vyacheslav Gromov, Andrei Pokutta, Dalia Saag, Lehti Varul, Liivi Yepiskoposyan, Levon Sicheritz-Pontén, Thomas Foley, Robert A. Lahr, Marta Mirazón Nielsen, Rasmus Kristiansen, Kristian Willerslev, Eske Article 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. Cell Press 2015-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4644222/ /pubmed/26496604 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.009 Text en © 2015 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Rasmussen, Simon Allentoft, Morten Erik Nielsen, Kasper Orlando, Ludovic Sikora, Martin Sjögren, Karl-Göran Pedersen, Anders Gorm Schubert, Mikkel Van Dam, Alex Kapel, Christian Moliin Outzen Nielsen, Henrik Bjørn Brunak, Søren Avetisyan, Pavel Epimakhov, Andrey Khalyapin, Mikhail Viktorovich Gnuni, Artak Kriiska, Aivar Lasak, Irena Metspalu, Mait Moiseyev, Vyacheslav Gromov, Andrei Pokutta, Dalia Saag, Lehti Varul, Liivi Yepiskoposyan, Levon Sicheritz-Pontén, Thomas Foley, Robert A. Lahr, Marta Mirazón Nielsen, Rasmus Kristiansen, Kristian Willerslev, Eske |
| spellingShingle |
Rasmussen, Simon Allentoft, Morten Erik Nielsen, Kasper Orlando, Ludovic Sikora, Martin Sjögren, Karl-Göran Pedersen, Anders Gorm Schubert, Mikkel Van Dam, Alex Kapel, Christian Moliin Outzen Nielsen, Henrik Bjørn Brunak, Søren Avetisyan, Pavel Epimakhov, Andrey Khalyapin, Mikhail Viktorovich Gnuni, Artak Kriiska, Aivar Lasak, Irena Metspalu, Mait Moiseyev, Vyacheslav Gromov, Andrei Pokutta, Dalia Saag, Lehti Varul, Liivi Yepiskoposyan, Levon Sicheritz-Pontén, Thomas Foley, Robert A. Lahr, Marta Mirazón Nielsen, Rasmus Kristiansen, Kristian Willerslev, Eske Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| author_facet |
Rasmussen, Simon Allentoft, Morten Erik Nielsen, Kasper Orlando, Ludovic Sikora, Martin Sjögren, Karl-Göran Pedersen, Anders Gorm Schubert, Mikkel Van Dam, Alex Kapel, Christian Moliin Outzen Nielsen, Henrik Bjørn Brunak, Søren Avetisyan, Pavel Epimakhov, Andrey Khalyapin, Mikhail Viktorovich Gnuni, Artak Kriiska, Aivar Lasak, Irena Metspalu, Mait Moiseyev, Vyacheslav Gromov, Andrei Pokutta, Dalia Saag, Lehti Varul, Liivi Yepiskoposyan, Levon Sicheritz-Pontén, Thomas Foley, Robert A. Lahr, Marta Mirazón Nielsen, Rasmus Kristiansen, Kristian Willerslev, Eske |
| author_sort |
Rasmussen, Simon |
| title |
Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| title_short |
Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| title_full |
Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| title_fullStr |
Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago |
| title_sort |
early divergent strains of yersinia pestis in eurasia 5,000 years ago |
| description |
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. |
| publisher |
Cell Press |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4644222/ |
| _version_ |
1613500990121574400 |