"Syphilis has long played a role in human history: some think that notable figures like Dracula author Bram Stoker and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin had the disease. And scientists know that the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum, has been plaguing humans for centuries, if not millennia. But there are competing theories about the exact origin of syphilis and other treponemal infections, such as bejel and yaws."
"Researchers sequenced the genome of a strain of T. pallidum that was discovered in the bones of a man who lived some 5,500 years ago in what is now Colombia. The discoverythe oldest of these microorganisms to be genetically sequenced by some 3,000 yearspushes back the evolutionary time line of these diseases and offers clues to where they came from."
"The discovery of the microorganism's DNA in the man's bones was made totally by chance, says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, one of the study's co-authors and an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Fehren-Schmitz and his colleagues compared their find with both modern and other historical genomes of T. pallidum and found that this strain of the bacterium emerged far earlier than known subspecies."
Genome sequencing recovered a Treponema pallidum strain from the bones of a man who lived about 5,500 years ago in present-day Colombia. The genome is roughly 3,000 years older than previously sequenced treponemal microorganisms, shifting the evolutionary timeline of syphilis and related diseases. Comparative analysis with modern and historical T. pallidum genomes indicates that this ancient strain emerged long before known subspecies. The find implies that treponemal diseases such as syphilis, bejel, and yaws were present millennia earlier than assumed and raises questions about when sexual transmission evolved. The DNA retrieval occurred by chance.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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