Emergence and spread of ancestral Yersinia pestis in Late-Neolithic and Bronze-Age Eurasia, ca. 5,000 to 2,500 y B.P

Abstract

First paragraph: Evolutionary history of any living organism is as fascinating as it is complex. The causative agent of plague, the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is no exception. Having diverged from the enteropathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, ancestral strains of Y. pestis spread all over Late-Neolithic Eurasia. In their study, Andrades Valtuena et al. (1) present a tour de force by reporting 17 new prehistoric Y. pestis genomes from Eurasian human burials (adding to 13 previously published) (1–7). Furthermore, their work, together with previously published data, lays the foundations for a new classification of Y. pestis strains and broadens our insight into the dynamics of emergence and spread of Y. pestis in prehistoric Eurasia.