Pre-Columbian mycobacterial genomes reveal seals as a source of New World human tuberculosis

BOS, KI; HARKINS KM; HERBIG A; COSCOLLA M; WEBER N; COMAS I; FORREST SA; BRYANT JM; HARRIS SR; SCHUENEMANN VJ; CAMPBELL TJ; MAJANDER K; WILBUR AK; GUICHON RA; WOLFE STEADMAN DL; COOK DC; NIEMANN S; BEHR MA; ZUMÁRRAGA M, ; BASTIDA R,; HUSON D; NIESELT K, ; YOUNG D,; PARKHILL J; BUIKSTRA JE; GAGNEUX S; STONE AC; KRAUSE J

NATURE

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2014 vol. 514 p. 494 - 497

0028-0836

Modern strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the Americasare closely related to those fromEurope, supporting the assumptionthat human tuberculosis was introduced post-contact1. This notion,however, is incompatible with archaeological evidence of pre-contacttuberculosis in the New World2. Comparative genomics of modernisolates suggests that M. tuberculosis attained its worldwide distributionfollowing human dispersals out of Africa during the Pleistoceneepoch3, although this has yet to be confirmed with ancientcalibration points. Here we present three 1,000-year-oldmycobacterialgenomesfromPeruvianhuman skeletons, revealing that amemberof the M. tuberculosis complex caused human disease beforecontact.The ancient strains are distinct fromknownhuman-adaptedforms and are most closely related to those adapted to seals and sealions. Two independent dating approaches suggest a most recentcommon ancestor for the M. tuberculosis complex less than 6,000years ago, which supports a Holocene dispersal of the disease. Ourresults implicate sea mammals as having played a role in transmittingthe disease to humans across the ocean.