ArticleNature communications2023
Ancient Clostridium DNA and variants of tetanus neurotoxins associated with human archaeological remains.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advances in Clostridial Neurotoxins: Passage of the Intestinal Barrier and Targeting of Specific Neuronal Cells.Toxins · 2026Review
- CarpeDeam: a de novo metagenome assembler for heavily damaged ancient datasets.Genome biology · 2025Article
- AdDeam: a fast and scalable tool for estimating and clustering reference-level damage profiles.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Tetanus: historical and palaeopathological aspects considering its current health impact.Journal of preventive medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Local Tetanus Begins with a Neuromuscular Junction Paralysis around the Site of Tetanus Neurotoxin Release due to Cleavage of the Vesicle-Associated Membrane Protein.The American journal of pathology · 2024Article
- AnnoView enables large-scale analysis, comparison, and visualization of microbial gene neighborhoods.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Article
- Ancient Clostridium DNA and variants of tetanus neurotoxins associated with human archaeological remains.Nature communications · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
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Abstract
The analysis of microbial genomes from human archaeological samples offers a historic snapshot of ancient pathogens and provides insights into the origins of modern infectious diseases. Here, we analyze metagenomic datasets from 38 human archaeological samples and identify bacterial genomic sequences related to modern-day Clostridium tetani, which produces the tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT) and causes the disease tetanus. These genomic assemblies had varying levels of completeness, and a subset of them displayed hallmarks of ancient DNA damage. Phylogenetic analyses revealed known C. tetani clades as well as potentially new Clostridium lineages closely related to C. tetani. The genomic assemblies encode 13 TeNT variants with unique substitution profiles, including a subgroup of TeNT variants found exclusively in ancient samples from South America. We experimentally tested a TeNT variant selected from an ancient Chilean mummy sample and found that it induced tetanus muscle paralysis in mice, with potency comparable to modern TeNT. Thus, our ancient DNA analysis identifies DNA from neurotoxigenic C. tetani in archaeological human samples, and a novel variant of TeNT that can cause disease in mammals.
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