Key Points
The DNA of bacteria and viruses that infected humans thousands of years ago is still trapped in their skeletal remains..
A 2015 study analysing microbial DNA from the teeth of 101 skeletons found that the bacteria that causes plague, Y. pestis, had been spreading amongst humans for at least 3,000 years prior to the first documented plague pandemic..
In a recentarticle, Gancz arguesthat as the links between the oral microbiome and NCDsare so well-established, we may be able to use ancient microbial DNA to infer whether ancient human populations experienced these conditions too...
Although they are often thought of as modern diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles, we actually have no idea to what extent they were prevalent in ancestral human populations, because the vast majority of NCDs leave no distinctive traces on the skeleton..
One of the aims of Weyrich's research is to develop microbiome transplantations swapping an unhealthy oral microbiome for a healthy one.. "Imagine a day where you don't have to brush your teeth as you have microbes in your mouth that don't cause oral disease that might be something we can get to by looking at what microbes people had prior to the widespread presence of these modern oral diseases," says Weyrich...
