Public Outreach

Felix M. Key in an interview with radioeins (in German): When most people in Europe hear the word “plague,” they probably think of the Middle Ages. After all, there have been no confirmed cases of plague in this part of the world for a very long time. Nevertheless, isolated cases of plague infection occur from time to time in the western United States and other parts of the world. The pathogen still lives in rodents and is often transmitted by flea bites. But that wasn't always the case: an international research team was able to detect an early plague pathogen in 4,000-year-old bones and teeth from sheep from the Bronze Age. Genetic analyses show that humans and sheep were infected with nearly identical strains of plague. We talk to evolutionary and microbiologist Dr. Felix M. Key about this. more

Felix Key in the Bayerischer Rundfunk podcast "IQ - Science and Research".
The mere word "plague" is enough to make you shudder. It is one of the deadliest epidemics - and not just because of the devastating plague epidemics in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Even in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it killed twelve million people. And even today, the plague has not been eradicated, although the pathogen, Yersinia pestis, originates from a harmless intestinal bacterium. How did it develop into a killer? more