Palaeogenetic research on the first plague pandemic – recent advances and future directions

Keller, Marcel (5 July 2022). Palaeogenetic research on the first plague pandemic – recent advances and future directions (Unpublished). In: European Society for Environmental History Conference 2022.

The rise of palaeogenetic research pathogens did not only allow for the clear identification of Yersinia pestis as causative agent of the Justinianic Plague (541 CE) and recurrent outbreaks, it also offered insights into the phylogeography and microevolution of this pathogen. Recent studies were able to establish the continuous and widespread presence of plague in Europe spanning from Britain to Spain and Southern Germany and over several decades, but also suggested an emergence of the causative lineage in Central Asia several centuries earlier. Furthermore, the identification of a genomic deletion, similarly seen in second pandemic strains, suggests a common evolutionary trajectory in both historical pandemics. Although the recovered Y. pestis genomes support a rapid spread and persistence of the pandemic, they only offer single snapshots of the complex history and dynamic of the first pandemic. As a genuinely zoonotic disease associated primarily with rodents, a major challenge for future interdisciplinary research will be the reconstruction of anthropogenic, environmental and climatic factors contributing to the spread, transmission and maintenance of plague.

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