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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 6717
Main Authors: Kay, Gemma L., Sergeant, Martin J., Zhou, Zhemin, Chan, Jacqueline Z.-M., Millard, Andrew, Quick, Joshua, Szikossy, Ildikó, Pap, Ildikó, Spigelman, Mark, Loman, Nicholas J., Achtman, Mark, Donoghue, Helen D., Pallen, Mark J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 07.04.2015
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Pub. Group
Subjects:
631/208/212/2142
631/208/212/2304
631/326/41/1470
692/699/255/1856
Adult
Bayes Theorem
Coinfection - microbiology
DNA, Bacterial - analysis
Europe - epidemiology
Female
Genome, Bacterial - genetics
Genotype
Genotypes
History, 18th Century
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Hungary - epidemiology
Male
Metagenomics
Middle Aged
Molecular Epidemiology
multidisciplinary
Mycobacterium tuberculosis - genetics
Phylogeny
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis - epidemiology
Tuberculosis - history
Tuberculosis - microbiology
Young Adult
Hungary
Europe
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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. Tuberculosis was once a major killer in Europe. Here the authors use metagenomics to obtain genomic sequences of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from human remains from eighteenth-century Hungary, revealing mixed infections within individuals as well as presence of the same strain in two individuals.
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These authors contributed equally to this work
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms7717