Eighteenth century Yersinia pestis genomes reveal the long-term persistence of an historical plague focus
- University of Tübingen, Germany
- Northern Arizona University, United States
- McMaster University, Canada
- The University of Sydney, Australia
- Université Bordeaux, France
Abstract
The 14th-18th century pandemic of Yersinia pestis caused devastating disease outbreaks in Europe for almost 400 years. The reasons for plague's persistence and abrupt disappearance in Europe are poorly understood, but could have been due to either the presence of now-extinct plague foci in Europe itself, or successive disease introductions from other locations. Here we present five Y. pestis genomes from one of the last European outbreaks of plague, from 1722 in Marseille, France. The lineage identified has not been found in any extant Y. pestis foci sampled to date, and has its ancestry in strains obtained from victims of the 14th century Black Death. These data suggest the existence of a previously uncharacterized historical plague focus that persisted for at least three centuries. We propose that this disease source may have been responsible for the many resurgences of plague in Europe following the Black Death.
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© 2016, Bos et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Eighteenth century Yersinia pestis genomes reveal the long-term persistence of an historical plague focus
eLife 5:e12994.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12994
Further reading
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DNA from 18th century teeth reveals plague secrets.
