Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • In Brief
  • Published:

Bacterial genomics

Three centuries of plague

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 14, page 130 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Spearheaded by the Black Death in the fourteenth century, the second plague pandemic was a formative influence on European societies in the medieval and early modern periods. Bos et al. sequenced five osteoarcheological samples from an outbreak — the Great Plague of Marseille (1720−1722) — dated towards the end of the second pandemic. A SNP-based phylogenetic analysis showed that the Marseille outbreak was caused by a Yersinia pestis strain descended from the Black Death strain but not ancestral to any known extant strain, which suggested that this pathogenic lineage had persisted for three centuries before becoming extinct. Based on the new phylogeny, the authors argue that an uncharacterized host reservoir local to Europe or West Asia may have sustained the repeated outbreaks of the second pandemic.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Bos, K. I. et al. Eighteenth century Yersinia pestis genomes reveal the long-term persistence of an historical plague focus. eLife http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12994 (2016)

Download references

Authors
  1. Naomi Attar
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Attar, N. Three centuries of plague. Nat Rev Microbiol 14, 130 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro.2016.18

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro.2016.18

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Microbiology

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Microbiology newsletter — what matters in microbiology research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Microbiology