Molecular Analysis of TB in 18th Century Mummy Samples from Vac, Hungary.

Our samples originate from a crypt in the Dominican church of Vác in Hungary. This crypt was used to house the remains of affluent Catholics during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1838, the crypt was sealed and forgotten until it was re-discovered in 1994, when it was found to contain the remains of over 200 individuals, most of whom had undergone natural mummification. Previous pathological and molecular investigations have shown that around half of those sampled were infected with TB. Various tissues from these Mummies were sampled and underwent shotgun sequencing in order to characterize any TB present.