Justinian plague was ancestor of Black Plague

Scientists traced the evolution of that nasty little bug.

After the initial reconstruction of the complete medieval genome ofY.pestis from a Black Death cemetery in London last year, the researchers from the University of Tuebingen used a published genome wide dataset from more than 300 modern Y.pestis strains to reconstruct the relationship of ancient and modern plague bacteria. Due to the well-established age of the ancient remains they were able to date major radiation events in the history of this pathogen that are likely linked to major pandemics in the human population.

The comparison of modern and ancient genomes revealed that of the 311 Y.pestis strains analyzed, 275 trace their ancestry back to the medieval Black Death pandemic in the mid of the 14^th century, confirming a previous analysis of 21 complete plague genomes by the same authors in 2011. In the new larger dataset, however, the authors identified an additional cluster of 11 contemporary bacterial strains that branch in the Y.pestis phylogeny between the 7^th and 10^th centuries, thus suggesting a radiation event ofY.pestis bacteria during a major outbreak. This time period roughly coincides with the Justinian plague, which historical sources suggest took place between the 6^th and 8^thcenturies AD.

Historians have long suspected that the plague of Justinian was a pandemic of bubonic plague but until now little empirical evidence existed. The suggestion that this pandemic was likely also caused by bubonic plague was rather unexpected for the researchers as their previous analysis published in 2011 revealed no evidence for major outbreaks of bubonic plague before the Black Death. "Our new analysis implies that bubonic plague may have been a major killer already in the late Roman Empire." explains Krause, a Juniorprofessor at the University of Tuebingen specializing in Palaeogenetics. "The plague of Justinian seems like the best candidate for this earlier pandemic."

Comments

[Solipiodava]

Nice post. I discover some thing more challenging on distinct blogs everyday. It's going to normally be stimulating to read content from other writers and practice a bit something from their store. I'd prefer to make use of some with the content on my blog regardless of whether you don't mind. Natually I'll give you a link on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.

new era hats

[cheap wedding dress here]

As soon as I detected this site I went on reddit to share some of the love with them.