Ancient DNA of Rickettsia felis and Toxoplasma gondii implicated in the death of a hunter-gatherer boy from South Africa, 2,000 years ago

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…

Read the full article here

Related Articles