How old are bacterial pathogens?
Only few molecular studies have addressed the age of bacterial pathogens that infected humans before the beginnings of medical bacteriology, but these have provided dramatic insights. The global genetic diversity of Helicobacter pylori, which infects human stomachs, parallels that of its human host. The time to the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of these bacteria approximates that of anatomically modern humans, i.e. at least 100 000 years, after calibrating the evolutionary divergence within H. pylori against major ancient human migrations. Similarly, genomic reconstructions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause of tuberculosis, from ancient skeletons in South America and mummies in Hungary support estimates of less than 6000 years for the tMRCA of M. tuberculosis. Finally, modern global patterns of genetic diversity and ancient DNA studies indicate that during the last 5000 years plague caused by Yersinia pestis has spread globally on multiple occasions from China and Central Asia. Such tMRCA estimates provide only lower bounds on the ages of bacterial pathogens, and additional studies are needed for realistic upper bounds on how long humans and animals have suffered from bacterial diseases.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences