Eighteenth-century genomes show that mixed infections were common at time of peak tuberculosis in Europe

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) was once a major killer in Europe, but it is unclear how the strains and patterns of infection at ‘peak TB' relate to what we see today. Here we describe 14 genome sequences of M. tuberculosis, representing 12 distinct genotypes, obtained from human remains from eighteenth-century Hungary using metagenomics. All our historic genotypes belong to M. tuberculosis Lineage 4. Bayesian phylogenetic dating, based on samples with well-documented dates, places the most recent common ancestor of this lineage in the late Roman period. We find that most bodies yielded more than one M. tuberculosis genotype and we document an intimate epidemiological link between infections in two long-dead individuals. Our results suggest that metagenomic approaches usefully inform detection and characterization of historical and contemporary infections.

How old are bacterial pathogens?

“…Both studies [55,56] calculated a very similar molecular clock rate, approximately 5 Â 10 28 (electronic supplementary material, table S1). If the clock rate is constant over longer time periods, then that calculation predicts a tMRCA of less than 6000 years for the whole MTBC.…”

“…The more recent of the two sites was a crypt in Hungary, in which corpses were interred in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, which was then bricked off from access until 1994 [56]. These bodies mummified spontaneously.…”

“…These bodies mummified spontaneously. Samples from 26 bodies revealed that eight of them contained MTBC, and allowed the reconstruction of a total of 14 genomes corresponding to 12 distinct genotypes [56]. (A mother and her daughter were each infected with the same two genotypes.)…”

A Mycobacterium tuberculosis komplex archaikus DNS kimutatása emberi csontvázmaradványokból

“…Az NGS technológia alkalmazása utóbbi években a tbc paleomikrobiológia kutatásában is megjelent (Chan et al, 2013;Bos et al, 2014;Kay et al, 2015. Egyelőre azonban nagyon kevés az archaikus tbc-vel összefüggő, jól intrepretálható metagenomikai eredmény, elsősorban az NGS-vizsgálatok rendkívül költségigényes mivolta miatt.…”

“…A halottakat faforgáccsal borított fenyőkoporsókba helyezték örök nyugalomra, a forgács felszívta a bomlás során keletkező testnedveket, így a testek a rothadás helyett kiszáradtak. A fenyőgyanta terpenoid tartalma meggátolta a baktériumok, ill. gombák szaporodását, ezzel hozzájárulva a mumifikálódáshoz (Pap et al, 1997;Szikossy et al, 2007 "morbus hungaricus" morbiditási értékekeit (Fletcher et al, 2003b (Pap et al, 1999;Fletcher et al, 2003a-b;Donoghue et al, 2011;Chan et al, 2013;Bos et al, 2014;Kay et al, 2015).…”