The population genomic legacy of the second plague pandemic

dc.contributor.author Gopalakrishnan, Shyam ca
dc.contributor.author Ebenesersdóttir, Sunna ca
dc.contributor.author Lalueza-Fox, Carles ca
dc.contributor.other Consorci del Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona ca
dc.coverage.spatial Noruega ca
dc.date.accessioned 2025-11-05T13:10:51Z
dc.date.available 2025-11-05T13:10:51Z
dc.date.issued 2022-10
dc.description Human populations have been shaped by catastrophes that may have left long-lasting signatures in their genomes. One notable example is the second plague pandemic that entered Europe in ca. 1,347 CE and repeatedly returned for over 300 years, with typical village and town mortality estimated at 10%–40%.1 It is assumed that this high mortality affected the gene pools of these populations. First, local population crashes reduced genetic diversity. Second, a change in frequency is expected for sequence variants that may have affected survival or susceptibility to the etiologic agent (Yersinia pestis).2 Third, mass mortality might alter the local gene pools through its impact on subsequent migration patterns. We explored these factors using the Norwegian city of Trondheim as a model, by sequencing 54 genomes spanning three time periods: (1) prior to the plague striking Trondheim in 1,349 CE, (2) the 17th–19th century, and (3) the present. We find that the pandemic period shaped the gene pool by reducing long distance immigration, in particular from the British Isles, and inducing a bottleneck that reduced genetic diversity. Although we also observe an excess of large FST values at multiple loci in the genome, these are shaped by reference biases introduced by mapping our relatively low genome coverage degraded DNA to the reference genome. This implies that attempts to detect selection using ancient DNA (aDNA) datasets that vary by read length and depth of sequencing coverage may be particularly challenging until methods have been developed to account for the impact of differential reference bias on test statistics.
dc.format application/pdf ca
dc.format.extent 28 p. ca
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/2072/526500
dc.identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.09.023
dc.identifier.citation Current biology, 32 (2022), 9 p. ca
dc.identifier.entitat consorcis ca
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/11703/127764
dc.language eng ca
dc.provenance Recercat (Dipòsit de la Recerca de Catalunya) ca
dc.rights L'accés als continguts d'aquest document queda condicionat a l'acceptació de les condicions d'ús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.rights.accessrights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess ca
dc.subject Genètica humana ca
dc.subject Epidèmies ca
dc.subject.category Ciència i tecnologia ca
dc.subject.forma articles ca
dc.title The population genomic legacy of the second plague pandemic
dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.type.driver info:eu-repo/semantics/article ca
metadadalocal.dependencia 8008920

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