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Keller M, Spyrou MA, Scheib CL, Neumann GU, Kröpelin A, Haas-Gebhard B, Päffgen B, Haberstroh J, Ribera I Lacomba A, Raynaud C, Cessford C, Durand R, Stadler P, Nägele K, Bates JS, Trautmann B, Inskip SA, Peters J, Robb JE, Kivisild T, Castex D, McCormick M, Bos KI, Harbeck M, Herbig A, Krause J. Ancient Yersinia pestis genomes from across Western Europe reveal early diversification during the First Pandemic (541-750). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2019; 116:12363-12372. [PMID: 31164419 PMCID: PMC6589673 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820447116] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The first historically documented pandemic caused by Yersinia pestis began as the Justinianic Plague in 541 within the Roman Empire and continued as the so-called First Pandemic until 750. Although paleogenomic studies have previously identified the causative agent as Y. pestis, little is known about the bacterium's spread, diversity, and genetic history over the course of the pandemic. To elucidate the microevolution of the bacterium during this time period, we screened human remains from 21 sites in Austria, Britain, Germany, France, and Spain for Y. pestis DNA and reconstructed eight genomes. We present a methodological approach assessing single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in ancient bacterial genomes, facilitating qualitative analyses of low coverage genomes from a metagenomic background. Phylogenetic analysis on the eight reconstructed genomes reveals the existence of previously undocumented Y. pestis diversity during the sixth to eighth centuries, and provides evidence for the presence of multiple distinct Y. pestis strains in Europe. We offer genetic evidence for the presence of the Justinianic Plague in the British Isles, previously only hypothesized from ambiguous documentary accounts, as well as the parallel occurrence of multiple derived strains in central and southern France, Spain, and southern Germany. Four of the reported strains form a polytomy similar to others seen across the Y. pestis phylogeny, associated with the Second and Third Pandemics. We identified a deletion of a 45-kb genomic region in the most recent First Pandemic strains affecting two virulence factors, intriguingly overlapping with a deletion found in 17th- to 18th-century genomes of the Second Pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marcel Keller
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
| | - Maria A Spyrou
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Christiana L Scheib
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
- Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, 51010 Tartu, Estonia
| | - Gunnar U Neumann
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Andreas Kröpelin
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany
| | | | - Bernd Päffgen
- Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80799 Munich, Germany
| | - Jochen Haberstroh
- Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites, 80539 Munich, Germany
| | | | - Claude Raynaud
- CNRS, UMR5140, Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes, 34199 Montpellier, France
| | - Craig Cessford
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Raphaël Durand
- Service d'Archéologie Préventive de l'Agglomération de Bourges Plus, 18023 Bourges Cedex, France
| | - Peter Stadler
- Department of Pre- and Protohistory, University of Vienna, 1190 Vienna, Austria
| | - Kathrin Nägele
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Jessica S Bates
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Bernd Trautmann
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
| | - Sarah A Inskip
- McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Joris Peters
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
- ArchaeoBioCenter, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany
- Department of Veterinary Sciences, Institute of Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and the History of Veterinary Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany
| | - John E Robb
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Toomas Kivisild
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
- Department of Human Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | | | - Michael McCormick
- Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, Department of History, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
- Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Kirsten I Bos
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Michaela Harbeck
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany;
| | - Alexander Herbig
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
| | - Johannes Krause
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
- Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, 07745 Jena, Germany
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Schneider C, Balzer C, Buttstädt M, Eßer K, Ginski S, Hahmann J, Ketzler G, Klemme M, Kröpelin A, Merbitz H, Michael S, Sachsen T, Siuda A, Weishoff-Houben M, Brunk MF, Dott W, Hofmeister H, Pfaffenbach C, Roll C, Selle K. "CITY 2020+": assessing climate change impacts for the city of Aachen related to demographic change and health – a progress report. Adv Sci Res 2011. [DOI: 10.5194/asr-6-261-2011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract. The research initiative CITY 2020+ assesses the risks and opportunities for residents in urban built environments under projected demographic and climate change for the year 2020 and beyond, using the city of Aachen as a case study. CITY 2020+ develops strategies, options and tools for planning and developing sustainable future city structures. The investigation focuses on how urban environment, political structure and residential behaviour can best be adapted, with attention to the interactions among structural, political, and sociological configurations and their impacts on human health. The interdisciplinary research is organized in three clusters. Within the first cluster, strategies of older people exposed to heat stress, and their networks as well as environmental health risks according to atmospheric conditions are examined. The second cluster addresses governance questions, urban planning and building technologies as well as spatial patterns of the urban heat island. The third cluster includes studies on air quality related to particulate matter and a historical perspective of city development concerning environmental issues and climate variability. However, it turns out that research topics that require an interdisciplinary approach are best addressed not by pre-structuring the work into related sub-projects but through combining them according to shared methodological approaches. Examples illustrating this rather practical approach within ongoing research are presented in this paper.
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