Ancient Clostridium DNA and variants of tetanus neurotoxins associated with human archaeological remains.

Autor: Hodgins HP; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Chen P; Department of Urology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.; Department of Surgery and Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Lobb B; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Wei X; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Tremblay BJM; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Mansfield MJ; Genomics and Regulatory Systems Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna, Okinawa, Japan., Lee VCY; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Lee PG; Department of Urology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.; Department of Surgery and Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Coffin J; Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Duggan AT; McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada., Dolphin AE; Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada., Renaud G; Department of Health Technology, Section of Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. gabre@dtu.dk., Dong M; Department of Urology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Min.Dong@childrens.harvard.edu.; Department of Surgery and Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Min.Dong@childrens.harvard.edu., Doxey AC; Department of Biology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. acdoxey@uwaterloo.ca.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature communications [Nat Commun] 2023 Sep 06; Vol. 14 (1), pp. 5475. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Sep 06.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41174-0
Abstrakt: The analysis of microbial genomes from human archaeological samples offers a historic snapshot of ancient pathogens and provides insights into the origins of modern infectious diseases. Here, we analyze metagenomic datasets from 38 human archaeological samples and identify bacterial genomic sequences related to modern-day Clostridium tetani, which produces the tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT) and causes the disease tetanus. These genomic assemblies had varying levels of completeness, and a subset of them displayed hallmarks of ancient DNA damage. Phylogenetic analyses revealed known C. tetani clades as well as potentially new Clostridium lineages closely related to C. tetani. The genomic assemblies encode 13 TeNT variants with unique substitution profiles, including a subgroup of TeNT variants found exclusively in ancient samples from South America. We experimentally tested a TeNT variant selected from an ancient Chilean mummy sample and found that it induced tetanus muscle paralysis in mice, with potency comparable to modern TeNT. Thus, our ancient DNA analysis identifies DNA from neurotoxigenic C. tetani in archaeological human samples, and a novel variant of TeNT that can cause disease in mammals.
(© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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