The 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori genome of the Iceman

2016/01/07 by Frank Maixner, Ben Krause‐Kyora, Dmitrij Turaev +20 · 4 citations
Medicine · #Helicobacter pylori-related gastroenterology studies

paper · doi:10.1126/science.aad2545

openalex publication_date 2016/01/07 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03

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.

Citations

• Tissue-based map of the human proteome
• The SILVA ribosomal RNA gene database project: improved data processing and web-based tools
• Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequence of the Tyrolean Iceman
• Pathogens and host immunity in the ancient human oral cavity
• Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
• Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans
• Basic local alignment search tool
• New insights into the Tyrolean Iceman's origin and phenotype as inferred by whole-genome sequencing
• A Simple, Fast, and Accurate Algorithm to Estimate Large Phylogenies by Maximum Likelihood
• A framework for variation discovery and genotyping using next-generation DNA sequencing data

Cited by

• The Iceman’s Last Meal Consisted of Fat, Wild Meat, and Cereals
• Possible evidence for care and treatment in the Tyrolean Iceman
• Salmonella enterica genomes from victims of a major sixteenth-century epidemic in Mexico
• Ötzi [wikipedia]