ArticleNature2011
A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 248 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
248 citing papers in PubMed, 793 citations in OpenAlex.
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- A refined phylochronology of the second plague pandemic in Western Eurasia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Probing the zooarchaeological record across time and space for ancient pathogen DNA.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Distance-amplified power-law distributions better characterize human long-distance travel.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Quarantine as filter: a conceptual framework from early modern Venice.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Review
- Genomic insights into ancestry and infectious disease in 17th-century colonial Brazil.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Plagued by the Past, Pressed by the Present: A One Health Perspective onBiomedicines · 2025Review
- "In-Flu-Enza and Out-Flew Hair:" Post-Epidemic Health and the Importance of the History of Epidemics.The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2025Review
- Ancient Origins and Global Diversity of Plague: Genomic Evidence for Deep Eurasian Reservoirs and Recurrent Emergence.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Childhood nutritional stress and later-life health outcomes in medieval England: Evidence from incremental dentine analysis.Science advances · 2025Article
- Genetic Evidence ofGenes · 2025Article
- SimOutbreakSelection: a simulation-based tool to optimise sampling design and analysis strategies for detecting epidemic-driven selection.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Gifting future scientists the past through well-preserved specimens of modern microbial ecosystems.Nature communications · 2025Article
- From herbarium to life: Implications of reviving historical fungi for modern plant pathology and agriculture.iScience · 2025Article
- Article
- Development and evaluation of a triplex real-time PCR assay for enhanced plague diagnostics in Madagascar.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- A Heavy Issue: Changes in Body Size in London Before, During and After the Black Death.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Blue-Light Photoactivated Curcumin-Loaded Chitosan Nanoparticles Prepared by Nanoprecipitation and Ionic Gelation: A Promising Approach for Antimicrobial Photodynamic Inactivation.ACS applied bio materials · 2025Article
- Decoding and Unravelling Mpox, Herpes, and Syphilis Infections: A State of Art Review.Current pharmaceutical biotechnology · 2025Review
188 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
16 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Technological advances in DNA recovery and sequencing have drastically expanded the scope of genetic analyses of ancient specimens to the extent that full genomic investigations are now feasible and are quickly becoming standard. This trend has important implications for infectious disease research because genomic data from ancient microbes may help to elucidate mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infections. Here we report a reconstructed ancient genome of Yersinia pestis at 30-fold average coverage from Black Death victims securely dated to episodes of pestilence-associated mortality in London, England, 1348-1350. Genetic architecture and phylogenetic analysis indicate that the ancient organism is ancestral to most extant strains and sits very close to the ancestral node of all Y. pestis commonly associated with human infection. Temporal estimates suggest that the Black Death of 1347-1351 was the main historical event responsible for the introduction and widespread dissemination of the ancestor to all currently circulating Y. pestis strains pathogenic to humans, and further indicates that contemporary Y. pestis epidemics have their origins in the medieval era. Comparisons against modern genomes reveal no unique derived positions in the medieval organism, indicating that the perceived increased virulence of the disease during the Black Death may not have been due to bacterial phenotype. These findings support the notion that factors other than microbial genetics, such as environment, vector dynamics and host susceptibility, should be at the forefront of epidemiological discussions regarding emerging Y. pestis infections.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.