New ancient Eastern European Yersinia pestis genomes illuminate the dispersal of plague in Europe.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Morozova, Irina Kasianov, Artem Bruskin, Sergey Neukamm, Judith Molak, Martyna Batieva, Elena Pudło, Aleksandra Rühli, Frank J. Schuenemann, Verena J.
Copyright Year	2020
Abstract	Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague, has been prevalent among humans for at least 5000 years, being accountable for several devastating epidemics in history, including the Black Death. Analyses of the genetic diversity of ancient strains of Y. pestis have shed light on the mechanisms of evolution and the spread of plague in Europe. However, many questions regarding the origins of the pathogen and its long persistence in Europe are still unresolved, especially during the late medieval time period. To address this, we present four newly assembled Y. pestis genomes from Eastern Europe (Poland and Southern Russia), dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth century AD. The analysis of polymorphisms in these genomes and their phylogenetic relationships with other ancient and modern Y. pestis strains may suggest several independent introductions of plague into Eastern Europe or its persistence in different reservoirs. Furthermore, with the reconstruction of a partial Y. pestis genome from rat skeletal remains found in a Polish ossuary, we were able to identify a potential animal reservoir in late medieval Europe. Overall, our results add new information concerning Y. pestis transmission and its evolutionary history in Eastern Europe.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Insights into health and disease from ancient biomolecules’.
ISSN	09628436
Journal	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume Number	375
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7702796
Issue Number	1812
PubMed reference number	33012225
e-ISSN	14712970
DOI	10.1098/rstb.2019.0569
Language	English
Publisher	The Royal Society
Publisher Date	2020-10-05
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. © 2020 The Authors.
Subject Keyword	plague Yersinia pestis pathogen evolution ancient pathogen genomics ancient DNA
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Agricultural and Biological Sciences