PALEOGENOMICS AND PALEOMICROBIOLOGY APPROACHES APPLIED TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF TRUE AND APOCRYPHAL PESTS IN DIFFERENT BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS: THE STUDY OF ANCIENT INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Plague is a bacterial disease caused by Yersinia pestis, which primarily affects wild rodents. It is spread from one rodent to another by fleas. To date, Plague is probably the infectious pathology responsible of the largest amount of deaths among all human history. Unfortunately, it is still persistent in some area of the world, as on November 4, 2014 the Ministry of Health of Madagascar reported an outbreak of plague (https://www.epicentro.iss.it/peste/aggiornamenti) to the World Health Organization. The first case was identified on August 31, a male from Soamahatamana village in the district of Tsiroanomandidy, who died on September 3. As of November 16, a total of 119 cases of plague were confirmed, including 40 deaths. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) and metagenomics has recently revolutionized genomic research, and its combination with high-throughput target enrichment method can be proficiently applied to the study of ancient DNA (aDNA), thus providing a powerful tool for understanding the evolution of pandemic infectious diseases like the plague.