Identification of ancient tuberculosis in human archaeological remains.. Homo sapiens

Identification of causative agents of ancient diseases in skeletal human samples has been made possible by technological advances, but environmental contamination and taxonomic misidentification remain a problem. We present a study aimed at improving the specificity of next generation sequencing-based identification of tuberculosis-causing mycobacteria. We designed a novel alignment target and provided support for a sequence length-based approach to selective pathogen identification, based on ancient DNA isolated from 28 Neolithic individuals from Polish territory. Bioinformatic tools make it possible to perform meaningful analysis on samples without subjective enrichment procedures. Unbiased character of alignment target selection makes this analysis suitable for relatively low-cost epidemiological screening of ancient remains.