Ancient pathogen genomics growing older: Reconstructing 31,600-year-old human virus genomes from common childhood infections | New Voices in Infection Biology

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Talk abstract:

Recent advances in ancient pathogen genomics has transformed our understanding of the origins and evolution of human viral infections. While direct DNA evidence from ancient viral genomes dates back ~7,000 years, nothing is known about the diversity of virus infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. In this talk I will discuss our recent work reconstructing ancient virus genomes from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, northeastern Siberia. The recovered viruses comprise two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X average genomic coverage) from different genotypes of human adenovirus C, as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus, demonstrating that common childhood viral infections have been in circulation in humans since the Pleistocene.