The entwined destinies of mankind and leprosy bacteria
Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 05:49
in Paleontology & Archaeology
For thousands of years an undesirable and persistent companion has been travelling with man wherever he goes. Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, has only one known natural host - mankind. And because of man's many travels, this bacillus has colonised the entire earth. Its history is therefore intimately tied to our own, and it is this migratory relationship that Stewart Cole, EPFL professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, and his team have analysed in a study to be published in Nature Genetics. Geneticists, microbiologists, and even archeologists have followed the bacteria's traces from their lab to the Silk Road and the tombs of Egyptian mummies...
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