Ancient Borrelia genomes document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever
Swali, P.; Booth, T.; Tan, C. C. S.; McCabe, J.; Anastasiadou, K.; Barrington, C.; Borrini, M.; Bricking, A.; Buckberry, J.; Buster, L.; Carlin, R.; Gilardet, A.; Glocke, I.; Irish, J.; Kelly, M.; King, M.; Petchey, F.; Peto, J.; Silva, M.; Speidel, L.; Tait, F.; Teoaca, A.; Valoriani, S.; Williams, M.; Madgwick, R.; Mullan, G.; Wilson, L.; Cootes, K.; Armit, I.; Gutierrez, M. G.; van Dorp, L.; Skoglund, P.
Show abstract
Several disease-causing bacteria have transitioned from tick-borne to louse-borne transmission, a process associated with increased virulence and genome reduction. However, the historical time frame and speed of such evolutionary transitions have not been documented with ancient genomes. Here, we discover four ancient cases of Borrelia recurrentis, the causative agent of louse-borne relapsing fever, in Britain between [~]600 and 2,300 years ago, and sequence whole genomes up to 29-fold coverage. We estimate a recent divergence from the closest tick-borne ancestor, likely within the last [~]8,000 years. We reconstruct a chronology of gene losses and acquisitions using the pan-genome of related species, and show that almost all of the reductive evolution observed in B. recurrentis had occurred by [~]2,000 years ago, and was thus a rapid process after divergence. Our observations provide a new understanding of the origins of B. recurrentis and document complex reductive evolution in a specialist vector-borne pathogen.
Matching journals
The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- Expanding the human gut microbiome atlas of Africa 94%
- High number of SARS-CoV-2 persistent infections uncovered through genetic analysis of samples from a large community-based surveillance study 94%
- Replicative selfish genetic elements are driving rapid pathogenic adaptation of Enterococcus faecium 94%
Similar papers in this journal
- Evolutionary and phylogenetic insights from a nuclear genome sequence of the extinct, giant subfossil koala lemur Megaladapis edwardsi 95%
- Gene Evolutionary Trajectories in M. tuberculosis Reveal Temporal Signs of Selection 95%
- Starships are active eukaryotic transposable elements mobilized by a new family of tyrosine recombinases 94%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.