Year of publication:
2016
Volume:
351
Issue:
6269
Issn:
0036-8075
Journal title abbreviated:
SCIENCE
Journal title long:
Science : a weekly journal devoted to the advancement of science / American Association for the Advancement of Science
Impact factor:
63.832
Pubmed:
Abstract:
The stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori is one of the most prevalent human pathogens. It has dispersed globally with its human host, resulting in a distinct phylogeographic pattern that can be used to reconstruct both recent and ancient human migrations. The extant European population of H. pylori is known to be a hybrid between Asian and African bacteria, but there exist different hypotheses about when and where the hybridization took place, reflecting the complex demographic history of Europeans. Here, we present a 5300-year-old H. pylori genome from a European Copper Age glacier mummy. The "Iceman" H. pylori is a nearly pure representative of the bacterial population of Asian origin that existed in Europe before hybridization, suggesting that the African population arrived in Europe within the past few thousand years.