Laboratorio Internacional de Investigación sobre el Genoma Humano, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Querétaro, Mexico.
Section for Evolutionary Genomics, The Globe Institute, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Elife. 2021 Aug 5;10:e68612. doi: 10.7554/eLife.68612.
After the European colonization of the Americas, there was a dramatic population collapse of the Indigenous inhabitants caused in part by the introduction of new pathogens. Although there is much speculation on the etiology of the Colonial epidemics, direct evidence for the presence of specific viruses during the Colonial era is lacking. To uncover the diversity of viral pathogens during this period, we designed an enrichment assay targeting ancient DNA (aDNA) from viruses of clinical importance and applied it to DNA extracts from individuals found in a Colonial hospital and a Colonial chapel (16th-18th century) where records suggest that victims of epidemics were buried during important outbreaks in Mexico City. This allowed us to reconstruct three ancient human parvovirus B19 genomes and one ancient human hepatitis B virus genome from distinct individuals. The viral genomes are similar to African strains, consistent with the inferred morphological and genetic African ancestry of the hosts as well as with the isotopic analysis of the human remains, suggesting an origin on the African continent. This study provides direct molecular evidence of ancient viruses being transported to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade and their subsequent introduction to New Spain. Altogether, our observations enrich the discussion about the etiology of infectious diseases during the Colonial period in Mexico.
在欧洲对美洲进行殖民后,由于新病原体的引入,土著居民的人口数量急剧下降。尽管对于殖民时期流行病的病因有很多推测,但缺乏殖民时期特定病毒存在的直接证据。为了揭示这一时期病毒病原体的多样性,我们设计了一种针对具有临床重要性的病毒的古代 DNA(aDNA)的富集检测方法,并将其应用于在殖民医院和殖民教堂(16 至 18 世纪)中发现的个体的 DNA 提取物中,这些地方的记录表明,在墨西哥城的重要疫情爆发期间,受害者被埋葬在这些地方。这使我们能够从不同个体中重建三个古老的人类细小病毒 B19 基因组和一个古老的乙型肝炎病毒基因组。这些病毒基因组与非洲株相似,与宿主推断的形态学和遗传学上的非洲血统以及对人类遗骸的同位素分析一致,表明它们起源于非洲大陆。这项研究提供了直接的分子证据,证明了在跨大西洋奴隶贸易期间,古代病毒被运送到美洲,并随后被引入新西班牙。总的来说,我们的观察结果丰富了关于墨西哥殖民时期传染病病因的讨论。