Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬 Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️ - ThreadSky

poojaswali.bsky.social • 5 days ago

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬
Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

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poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

Paper 👉 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr2147

poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

Several pathogens, including Borrelia recurrentis, have shifted from tick- to louse-borne transmission, a process linked to increased virulence and genome reduction. However, modern B. recurrentis genomes are scarce and show low diversity, making it difficult to understand the underlying processes.

poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

We discovered 4 cases of Borrelia recurrentis (louse-borne relapsing fever) in Britain, from individuals at 4 different sites dating to ~600 to 2,300 years ago. including one genome with a remarkable 29X coverage (with WGS sequencing) 🦷

poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

We found that substantial genome reduction linked to the shift from tick-borne to louse-borne transmission had already occurred by the our oldest genome, dating to 2,300 BP (Iron Ages) 📉

poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

Using a pan-genome approach, we utilise the diversity of closely related Borrelia species, to track gene loss/gains. Interestingly, we found Soj, a plasmid partitioning gene on found on the conserved chromosome of the tick-borne ancestor B. duttonii, was present in the Iron Age B. recurrentis

poojaswali.bsky.social•5 days ago

However, in the ‘Medieval clade’, Soj was replaced by a homolog, ParA on its plasmid, showing partitioning function was retained despite genome reduction. We also observed inactivation of recA, involved in DNA repair, during this time. 🤔

rfregel.bsky.social•5 days ago

Congrats Pooja!!

hugh-willmott.bsky.social•5 days ago

Congratulations!

kleonardphd.bsky.social•5 days ago

Please use alt text

gunnar-u-neumann.bsky.social•5 days ago

Congratulations, Pooja!!!

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