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Lookup NU author(s): Matthew TeasdaleORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Brucella melitensis is a major livestock bacterial pathogen and zoonosis, causing disease and infection-related abortions in small ruminants and humans. A considerable burden to animal-based economies today, the presence of Brucella in Neolithic pastoral communities has been hypothesised but we lack direct genomic evidence thus far. We report a 3.45X B. melitensis genome preserved in an ~8000 year old sheep specimen from Menteşe Höyük, Northwest Türkiye, demonstrating that the pathogen had evolved and was circulating in Neolithic livestock. The genome is basal with respect to all known B. melitensis and allows the calibration of the B. melitensis speciation time from the primarily cattle-infecting B. abortus to approximately 9800 years Before Present (BP), coinciding with a period of consolidation and dispersal of livestock economies. We use the basal genome to timestamp evolutionary events in B. melitensis, including pseudogenization events linked to erythritol response, the supposed determinant of the pathogen’s placental tropism in goats and sheep. Our data suggest that the development of herd management and multi-species livestock economies in the 11th–9th millennium BP drove speciation and host adaptation of this zoonotic pathogen.
Author(s): L'Hôte L, Light I, Mattiangeli V, Teasdale MD, Halpin Á, Gourichon L, Key FM, Daly KG
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Communications
Year: 2024
Volume: 15
Online publication date: 20/07/2024
Acceptance date: 15/07/2024
Date deposited: 07/10/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50536-1
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50536-1
Data Access Statement: Collapsed sequencing data with host reads removed and B. melitensisaligned bam file for Mentese prior to data QC are available at ENA accession PRJEB75678. Reference sequences used in this study are previously published and available for B. melitensis [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCF_000007125.1/], B. abortus [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCF_000054005.1/], and B. suis [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCF_000007505. 1/]. We employed sequences previously analyzed by Abdel-Glil and colleagues [https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.00311]; ENA accessions for each are presented in Supplementary Data 6. Source data are provided with this paper. The screened Mentese specimens are under the temporary stewardship of Kevin G. Daly (UCD, Dublin) and permanent stewardship of Lionel Gourichon, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice. Applications to access and re-examine the material should be made to Dr. Gourichon. Specimen identifiers are provided in Data S1.
PubMed id: 39033187
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