Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts

Abstract

Ancient DNA research of pathogens and their animal and human hosts provides unique insights into past health, the changes that led to pathogen jumps and pandemic outbreaks, the timing of such events, and the factors (both genetic and cultural) that affect pathogen success and human survival and recovery. Technological improvements and the increasing number of ancient samples analyzed have enabled an unprecedented investigation into pathogen evolution. Pathogen emergence and adaptation are constant, but the mechanisms underlying pathogen success as well as host susceptibility and resistance are often only observable in time series data. When contextualized with historical and archaeological data, ancient genomes provide a novel approach for detecting how sociocultural and biological changes interact. In this review, we examine this recent research as well as the challenges that remain. We focus on the zoonoses that became human endemic or intermittent plagues, the relationship of these to human mobility and migration (particularly during the Colonial Period), the signals of selection and population change that are found in both the hosts and the pathogens, and the potential for archival samples to reveal more about these histories.