RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Ancient DNA of <em>Rickettsia felis</em> and <em>Toxoplasma gondii</em> implicated in the death of a hunter-gatherer boy from South Africa, 2,000 years ago
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.07.23.217141
DO 10.1101/2020.07.23.217141
A1 Riaan F. Rifkin
A1 Surendra Vikram
A1 Jean-Baptiste J. Ramond
A1 Don A. Cowan
A1 Mattias Jakobsson
A1 Carina M. Schlebusch
A1 Marlize Lombard
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/23/2020.07.23.217141.abstract
AB The Stone Age record of South Africa provides some of the earliest evidence for the biological and cultural origins of Homo sapiens. While there is extensive genomic evidence for the selection of polymorphisms in response to pathogen-pressure in sub-Saharan Africa, there is insufficient evidence for ancient human-pathogen interactions in the region. Here, we analysed shotgun metagenome libraries derived from the sequencing of a Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer child who lived near Ballito Bay, South Africa, c. 2,000 years ago. This resulted in the identification of DNA sequence reads homologous to Rickettsia felis, and the reconstruction of an ancient R. felis genome, the causative agent of typhus-like flea-borne rickettsioses. The concurrent detection of DNA reads derived from Toxoplasma gondii, the causative agent of toxoplasmosis, confirms the pre-Neolithic incidence of these pathogens in southern Africa. We demonstrate that an R. felis and T. gondii co-infection, exacerbated by various additional bacterial and parasitic pathogens, contributed to the ill-health and subsequent demise of the boy from Ballito Bay.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.