Lab Meeting on Ancient Microbiomes

Posted by Katie Duryea

This week for lab meeting I thought it might be fun to read this recent paper that explores the gut microbiome of the Iceman mummy to draw inference on the evolutionary history of human stomach ailments. I'll bring some fika that will hopefully sit well with your microbiome;)

When: Tues, February 9th, 10:00
Where: Argument

The 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori genome of the Iceman

Frank Maixner ¹ , * , † , 

Ben Krause-Kyora 2 , † , 

Dmitry Turaev 3 , † , 

Alexander Herbig 4 , 5 , † , 

Michael R. Hoop Mann 6 ,

Janice L. Hallow 6 , 

Ulrike Kusebauch 6 , 

Eduard Egarter Vigl 7 , 

Peter Malfertheiner 8 , 

Francis Megraud 9 ,

Niall O'Sullivan 1 , 

Giovanna Cipollini 1 , 

Valentina Coia 1 , 

Marco Samadelli 1 , 

Lars Engstrand 10 , 

Bodo Linz 11 ,

Robert L. Moritz 6 , 

Rudolf Grimm 12 , 

John Krause 4 , 5 , ‡ , 

Almut Nebel 2 , ‡ , 

Yoshan Moodley 13 , 14 , ‡ , 

Thomas Rattei 3 , ‡ , 

Albert Zink 1 , *

Abstract

The stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori is one of the most prevalent human pathogens. It has dispersed globally with its human host, resulting Thing thing into a distinct phylogeographic pattern That Can Be Used to Reconstruct bothering Recent and ancient human migrations. The extant European populations of H. pylori is known to be a hybrid between Asian and African bacteria, but there exist different Hypotheses about When and Where The hybridization took place, reflecting the complex demographic history of Europeans. Here, we present a 5300-year-old H. pylori genome from a European Copper Age glacier mummy. The "Iceman" H. pylori is a nearly pure representative of the bacterial population of Asian origin That existed in Europe before hybridization, suggesting That the African population arrived in Europe within the past few thousand years.