Authors
Anna K Fotakis, Sean D Denham, Meaghan Mackie, Miren Iraeta Orbegozo, Dorothea Mylopotamitaki, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén, Jesper V Olsen, Enrico Cappellini, Guojie Zhang, Axel Christophersen, M Thomas P Gilbert, Åshild J Vågene
Publication date
2020/11/23
Journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
Volume
375
Issue
1812
Pages
20190584
Publisher
The Royal Society
Description
Mineralized dental plaque (calculus) has proven to be an excellent source of ancient biomolecules. Here we present a Mycobacterium leprae genome (6.6-fold), the causative agent of leprosy, recovered via shotgun sequencing of sixteenth-century human dental calculus from an individual from Trondheim, Norway. When phylogenetically placed, this genome falls in branch 3I among the diversity of other contemporary ancient strains from Northern Europe. Moreover, ancient mycobacterial peptides were retrieved via mass spectrometry-based proteomics, further validating the presence of the pathogen. Mycobacterium leprae can readily be detected in the oral cavity and associated mucosal membranes, which likely contributed to it being incorporated into this individual's dental calculus. This individual showed some possible, but not definitive, evidence of skeletal lesions associated with early-stage leprosy. This …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
AK Fotakis, SD Denham, M Mackie, MI Orbegozo… - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020