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Targeted Enrichment Of Ancient Pathogens Yielding The Ppcp1 Plasmid Of Yersinia Pestis From Victims Of The Black Death, Verena J. Schuenemann, Kristen Bos, Sharon Dewitte, Hendrik N. Poinar, Sarah Schmedes, Joslyn Jamieson, Alissa Mittnik, Stephen Forrest, Brian K. Coombes, James W. Wood, David J.D. Earn, William White, Johannes Krause, Hendrik N. Poinar

Faculty Publications

Although investigations of medieval plague victims have identified Yersinia pestis as the putative etiologic agent of the pandemic, methodological limitations have prevented large-scale genomic investigations to evaluate changes in the pathogen's virulence over time. We screened over 100 skeletal remains from Black Death victims of the East Smithfield mass burial site (1348–1350, London, England). Recent methods of DNA enrichment coupled with high-throughput DNA sequencing subsequently permitted reconstruction of ten full human mitochondrial genomes (16 kb each) and the full pPCP1 (9.6 kb) virulence-associated plasmid at high coverage. Comparisons of molecular damage profiles between endogenous human and Y. pestis DNA confirmed …