{"id":9637,"date":"2025-06-04T11:34:51","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T16:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9637"},"modified":"2025-06-04T11:34:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T16:34:53","slug":"searching-for-clues-in-the-genome-what-ancient-dna-reveals-about-the-history-of-epidemics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/06\/04\/searching-for-clues-in-the-genome-what-ancient-dna-reveals-about-the-history-of-epidemics\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for clues in the genome: What ancient DNA reveals about the history of epidemics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fli.de\/en\/press\/press-releases\/press-singleview\/searching-for-clues-in-the-genome-what-ancient-dna-reveals-about-the-history-of-epidemics\/\">Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut<\/a> <strong>How did the devastating epidemics of plague and tuberculosis come about \u2013 and what can we learn from them today? Renowned paleogeneticist&nbsp;Prof.&nbsp;Dr. Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will give the 13th Loeffler Lecture at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald, providing exciting insights into his research on the history of historical pathogens.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This research is made possible by state-of-the-art\u00a0DNA\u00a0technologies: scientists can now analyse tiny traces of pathogen\u00a0DNA\u00a0from human remains \u2013 a kind of \u2018molecular fossil\u2019. This allows us to trace how bacteria and viruses have evolved, spread and adapted to humans over thousands of years. Among other things, Krause&#8217;s research team reconstructed the genetic material of the plague bacterium from medieval bone finds and was able to trace the origins of the disease back to Central Asia. Even older\u00a0DNA\u00a0finds from the Stone Age show how the plague adapted to humans and fleas as carriers thousands of years ago \u2013 long before it became a devastating pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fli.de\/en\/press\/press-releases\/press-singleview\/searching-for-clues-in-the-genome-what-ancient-dna-reveals-about-the-history-of-epidemics\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\" Gj C QdwFmSG aJh c fS  gIKnNU \"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut How did the devastating epidemics of plague and tuberculosis come about \u2013 and what can we learn from them today? Renowned paleogeneticist&nbsp;Prof.&nbsp;Dr. Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will give the 13th Loeffler Lecture at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald, providing exciting insights into his research [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9638,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions\/9638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}