Black Death genomics and the evolution of pathogen virulence

黑死病是古代最致命的瘟疫之一，它改变了人类历史的进程。我们将重建并分析其致病因子——鼠疫耶尔森氏菌的进化——从黑死病及更早时期的人类骨骼遗骸中取样。我们将确定随着时间的推移改变鼠疫流行毒力的突变，从而对有史以来可用于研究的最引人注目的病原体出现例子有独特的见解。

The Black Death was one of the most lethal plagues of antiquity and changed the course of human history. We will reconstruct and analyse the evolution of its causative agent – the bacterium Yersinia pestis – sampled from human skeletal remains dating back to the Black Death and beyond. We will determine the mutations that changed the virulence of plague epidemics through time, enabling a unique insight into the most dramatic example of pathogen emergence that has ever been available for study.