Ancient Borrelia genomes document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Swali, Pooja; Booth, Thomas; Tan, Cedric C. S.; McCabe, Jesse; Anastasiadou, Kyriaki; Barrington, Christopher; Borrini, Matteo; Bricking, Adelle; Buckberry, Jo; Buster, Lindsey; Carlin, Rea; Gilardet, Alexandre; Glocke, Isabelle; Irish, Joel D.; Kelly, Monica; King, Megan; Petchey, Fiona; Peto, Jessica; Silva, Marina; Speidel, Leo; Tait, Frankie; Teoaca, Adelina; Valoriani, Satu; Williams, Mia; Madgwick, Richard; Mullan, Graham; Wilson, Linda; Cootes, Kevin; Armit, Ian; Gutierrez, Maximiliano G.; van Dorp, Lucy; Skoglund, Pontus
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; Francis Crick Institute; Francis Crick Institute; Liverpool John Moores University; University of Bradford; University of York - UK; Canterbury Christ Church University; Swedish Museum of Natural History; University of Waikato; University of Exeter; RIKEN; University of Reading; Cardiff University; University of Bristol; University of Bristol; Francis Crick Institute
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-10899
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adr2147
• 发表日期: 2025-05-22
• 关键词: protein; sequence; recurrentis; alignment; plasmid

摘要

Several bacterial pathogens have transitioned from tick-borne to louse-borne transmission, which often involves genome reduction and increasing virulence. However, the timing of such transitions remains unclear. We sequenced four ancient Borrelia recurrentis genomes, the agent of louse-borne relapsing fever, dating from 2300 to 600 years ago. We estimated the divergence from its closest tick-borne relative to 6000 to 4000 years ago, which suggests an emergence coinciding with human lifestyle changes such as the advent of wool-based textiles. Pan-genome analysis indicated that much of the evolution characteristic of B. recurrentis had occurred by similar to 2300 years ago, though further gene turnover, particularly in plasmid partitioning, persisted until similar to 1000 years ago. Our findings provide a direct genomic chronology of the evolution of this specialized vector-borne pathogen.