A 5500-year-old Treponema pallidum genome from Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bozzi, Davide; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen Z.; Delgado, Miguel; Buikstra, Jane E.; Amorim, Carlos Eduardo G.; Kassadjikova, Kalina; Estrada, Melissa Pratt; Greub, Gilbert; Rascovan, Nicolas; Smajs, David; Fehren-Schmitz, Lars; Malaspinas, Anna-Sapfo; Nelson, Elizabeth A.
• 署名单位: University of Lausanne; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; National University of La Plata; Museo La Plata; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Fudan University; Fudan University; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe; California State University System; California State University Los Angeles; University of Lausanne; University of Lausanne; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV); Universite Paris Cite; Pasteur Network; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut Pasteur Paris; Masaryk University; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; Southern Methodist University
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adw3020
• 发表日期: 2026-01-22
• 页码: eadw3020
• 关键词: NORTHERN SOUTH-AMERICA; population history; syphilis; sequence; origin; diversity; infection; alignment; Visualization; improvements

摘要

Treponematosis, a bacterial infection caused by Treponema pallidum subspecies and T. carateum (yaws, bejel, syphilis, pinta), has afflicted humans for millennia. Despite paleopathological evidence and emerging genomic data, little is known about the evolutionary history of these pathogens. We report a 5500-year-old Treponema genome (TE1-3) from Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer contexts of the rock shelter Tequendama I in Colombia. Our analyses place TE1-3 as a sister lineage to all known T. pallidum subspecies, positioning this pathogen in the Americas millennia before European contact and before diversification of the subspecies causing syphilis, yaws, and bejel. This discovery broadens the known diversity of T. pallidum while extending the genomic record of treponemal pathogens by millennia, providing molecular support for a deep history of T. pallidum in the Americas.