Spawn of Medieval "Black Death" Bug Still Roam the Earth
Plague bacterium has changed little in 600 years, DNA study shows.
The new findings are based on bacteria recovered from skeletons found in a mid-1300s cemetery for Black Death victims in London, England. The grave excavation was undertaken by Museum of London Archaeology.
(Related story and pictures: "Mass Plague Graves Found on Venice 'Quarantine' Island.")
Kirsten I. Bos of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and Verena J. Schuenemann of the University of Tübingen in Germany led an effort to sequence the genome of the Black Death pathogen, Yersinia pestis, recovered from the medieval grave.
After examining Y. pestis samples from 46 teeth and 53 bones, the team determined that the plague hasn't changed much, genetically speaking, in more than 600 years.
The result "indicates that contemporary Y. pestis epidemics have their origins in
