Assembly of a 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori genome from the intestine content of the tyrollean glacier mummy. The 5,300-year-old Helicobacter pylori genome of the Iceman

The stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori is one of the most prevalent human pathogens. It has dispersed globally with its host for the past 100,000 years leading in a distinct phylogeographic pattern in modern H. pylori populations. This phylogeography is used to deduce both recent and ancient human migrations (1, 2). Owing to the complex demographic history of Europe, different hypotheses about the origin of the extant European H. pylori population (hpEurope) exist (3, 4). Here, we present a 5,300-year-old high-coverage H. pylori genome from a European Copper Age glacier mummy. Comparative sequence analysis with contemporary H. pylori classifies the “Iceman” Helicobacter as a cagA positive vacA s1a/i1/m1 type strain, most closely resembling a strain that today is commonly found in Central and South Asia and that substantially shaped the genomes of modern European H. pylori strains.

胃内细菌幽门螺杆菌（Helicobacter pylori）是最为普遍的人类致病菌之一。在过去10万年中，它与其宿主一同在全球范围内扩散，进而在现代幽门螺杆菌种群中形成了独特的系统地理学模式。这种系统地理学特征被用于推演近代与远古的人类迁徙活动(1, 2)。由于欧洲复杂的人口历史，关于现存欧洲幽门螺杆菌种群（hpEurope）的起源存在多种不同假说(3, 4)。本研究报道了一例来自欧洲铜器时代冰川木乃伊的、距今5300年的高覆盖度幽门螺杆菌基因组。通过与当代幽门螺杆菌的比较序列分析，我们将该"冰人"幽门螺杆菌鉴定为细胞毒素相关基因A（cagA）阳性、空泡毒素基因A（vacA）s1a/i1/m1型菌株，该菌株与现今常见于中亚和南亚的菌株亲缘关系最为接近，且对现代欧洲幽门螺杆菌菌株的基因组构成产生了实质性塑造作用。