ArticleCommunications biology2023
Rickettsia felis DNA recovered from a child who lived in southern Africa 2000 years ago.
Article in Communications biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human burials indicate climate-mediated shifts in South African agriculturalist demography after 2000 years ago.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genetic diversity and prevalence of emerging Rickettsiales in Yunnan Province: a large-scale study.Infectious diseases of poverty · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The Stone Age record of South Africa provides some of the earliest evidence for the biological and cultural origins of Homo sapiens. While there is extensive genomic evidence for the selection of polymorphisms in response to pathogen-pressure in sub-Saharan Africa, e.g., the sickle cell trait which provides protection against malaria, there is inadequate direct human genomic evidence for ancient human-pathogen infection in the region. Here, we analysed shotgun metagenome libraries derived from the sequencing of a Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer child who lived near Ballito Bay, South Africa, c. 2000 years ago. This resulted in the identification of ancient DNA sequence reads homologous to Rickettsia felis, the causative agent of typhus-like flea-borne rickettsioses, and the reconstruction of an ancient R. felis genome.
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