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Genomics

Plague's progress

Nature volume 478, pages 465–466 (2011)Cite this article

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The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. The first complete genome sequence of the causative Yersinia pestis bacterium provides a fresh perspective on plague evolution. See Letter p.506

Obtaining bacterial DNA that is almost 700 years old presents a number of challenges, prominent among them the risk of inadvertent contamination by DNA from other sources1,2. Bos et al. extracted bacterial DNA from five teeth of plague victims taken from a burial pit at East Smithfield (ES) in London, which was established at the height of the pandemic in 1348–49. The key methodological advance in their work was the use of a molecular capture assay that assisted in the detection of Y. pestis DNA amid a background of host and environmental DNA. The stringent laboratory procedures used by the authors, the observed patterns of mutational damage in the DNA, and the finding that the ES strain is ancestral to all contemporary Y. pestis strains on phylogenetic trees, strongly suggest that the obtained genome sequence is an authentic representative of the Black Death pathogen.

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Figure 1: The last rites.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Edward C. Holmes is at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA, and the Fogarty International Center, Bethesda, Maryland.,

    Edward C. Holmes

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  1. Edward C. Holmes
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Correspondence to Edward C. Holmes.

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Holmes, E. Plague's progress. Nature 478, 465–466 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/478465a

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