Yersinia Pestis Bacteria Confirmed as Cause of Middle Ages 'Black Death' Plague Epidemic
ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2010) — The latest tests conducted by anthropologists at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have proven that the bacteria Yersinia pestis was indeed the causative agent behind the "Black Death" that raged across Europe in the Middle Ages.
Geographical position of the five archaeological sites investigated. Green dots indicate the sites. Also indicated are two likely independent infection routes (black and red dotted arrows) for the spread of the Black Death (1347-1353) after Benedictow. (Credit: Besansky et al. Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death. PLoS Pathogens, 2010; 6 (10): e1001134 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134)
The cause of the epidemic has always remained highly controversial and other pathogens were often named as possible causes, in particular for the northern European regions. Using DNA and protein analyses from skeletons of plague victims, an international team led by the scientists from Mainz has now conclusively shown that Yersinia pestis was responsible for the Black Death in the 14th century and the subsequent epidemics that continued to erupt throughout the European continent for the next 400 years. The tests conducted on genetic material from mass graves in five countries also identified at least two previously unknown types ofYersinia pestis that occurred as pathogens.
"Our findings indicate that the plague traveled to Europe over at least two channels, which then went their own individual ways," explains Dr Barbara Bramanti from the Institute of Anthropology of Mainz University. The works, published in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens, now provide the necessary basis for conducting a detailed historical reconstruction of how this illness spread.
For a number of years, Barbara Bramanti has been researching major epidemics that were rampant throughout Europe and their possible selective consequences as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). For the recently published work, 76 human skeletons were examined from suspected mass graves for plague victims in England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. While other infections such as leprosy can be easily identified long after death by the deformed bones, the problem faced in the search for plague victims lies in the fact that the illness can lead to death within just a few days and leaves no visible traces.
...
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: Science Daily
+++++
Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death
Stephanie Haensch1, Raffaella Bianucci2,3, Michel Signoli3,4, Minoarisoa Rajerison5, Michael Schultz6, Sacha Kacki7,8, Marco Vermunt9, Darlene A. Weston10,11,12,Derek Hurst13, Mark Achtman14, Elisabeth Carniel15,Barbara Bramanti1*
1 Institute for Anthropology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, 2 Laboratory of Criminalistic Sciences Department of Anatomy, Pharmacology and Legal Medicine, University of Turin, Turin, Italy, 3 Unité d'Anthropologie Bioculturelle, Faculté de Medecine, University of Mediterranean-CNRS-EFS, Marseille, France, 4 Centre d'Études Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen-âge, UMR 6130 CNRS–250 University of Nice, Valbonne, France, 5 Center for Plague, Institute Pasteur de Madagascar, World Health Organization Collaborating, Antananarivo, Madagascar, 6Department of Anatomy and Embryology Medical Faculty, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany, 7 Inrap, Villeneuve-d'Ascq Archaeological Center, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France, 8 Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Populations du Passé, Université Bordeaux 1, Talence, France, 9 Department of Monuments and Archaeology, Municipality of Bergen op Zoom, Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands, 10 Barge's Anthropologica, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, 11 Division of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, 12 Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 13 Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service, Worcestershire County Council, Worcester, United Kingdom, 14 Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, 15 Yersinia Research Unit, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
Abstract
From AD 1347 to AD 1353, the Black Death killed tens of millions of people in Europe, leaving misery and devastation in its wake, with successive epidemics ravaging the continent until the 18th century. The etiology of this disease has remained highly controversial, ranging from claims based on genetics and the historical descriptions of symptoms that it was caused by Yersinia pestisto conclusions that it must have been caused by other pathogens. It has also been disputed whether plague had the same etiology in northern and southern Europe. Here we identified DNA and protein signatures specific for Y. pestis in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. We confirm that Y. pestis caused the Black Death and later epidemics on the entire European continent over the course of four centuries. Furthermore, on the basis of 17 single nucleotide polymorphisms plus the absence of a deletion in glpD gene, our aDNA results identified two previously unknown but related clades of Y. pestis associated with distinct medieval mass graves. These findings suggest that plague was imported to Europe on two or more occasions, each following a distinct route. These two clades are ancestral to modern isolates of Y. pestis biovars Orientalis and Medievalis. Our results clarify the etiology of the Black Death and provide a paradigm for a detailed historical reconstruction of the infection routes followed by this disease.
Author Summary
Several historical epidemic waves of plague have been attributed to Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of modern plague. The most famous of these was the second pandemic which was active in Europe from AD 1347 until 1750, and began with the ‘Black Death’. The most informative method to establish the etiological nature of these ancient infections should be the analysis of ancient DNA, but the results of this method have been controversial. Here, by combining ancient DNA analyses and protein-specific detection, we demonstrate unambiguously that Y. pestis caused the Black Death. Furthermore, we show that at least two variants of Y. pestis spread over Europe during the second pandemic. The analysis of up to 20 diagnostic markers reveals that the two variants evolved near the time that phylogenetic branches 1 and 2 separated and may no longer exist. Our results thus resolve a long-standing debate about the etiology of the Black Death and provide key information about the evolution of the plague bacillus and the spread of the disease during the Middle Ages.
Citation: Haensch S, Bianucci R, Signoli M, Rajerison M, Schultz M, et al. (2010) Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death. PLoS Pathog 6(10): e1001134. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134
Editor: Nora J. Besansky, University of Notre Dame, United States of America
Received: May 28, 2010; Accepted: September 7, 2010; Published: October 7, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Haensch et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This research was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Br 2965/1-1 and Br 2965/1-2), the University of Mainz (FP1-2007) and the Science Foundation of Ireland (05/FE1/B882). The RDT analysis was supported by Compagnia di San Paolo (2007.0171). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: bramanti@uni-mainz.de
+++++
