Plague. A terrible disease that has claimed tens of millions of lives. Plague has accompanied our civilization since its inception. In the entire history of mankind, there have been several plague pandemics, the most terrible of which is the plague of Justinian, which raged from the middle of the 6th century to the middle of the 7th century. Then the plague disappeared without a trace as suddenly as it appeared. And quite recently, a group of scientists from Germany managed to "resurrect" the Justinian plague. But why?
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which has several dozen pathogenic strains and, although we are not threatened by an epidemic at the moment, according to the World Health Organization, 1-2 thousand cases of plague are registered annually. The most endemic areas are Madagascar, Congo and Peru.
So why, after all, it was necessary to revive such a terrible bacterium? The fact is that the more genomes of plague strains can be studied, the better, because this will help in the development of new treatments that are more effective than the previous ones. A large number of genomes will make it possible to notice in time the smallest changes in the pathogenic organism, which can affect the rate of spread of the disease caused by it.
The way thanks to which it was possible to "resurrect" the bacterium is called "genome sequencing", that is, the restoration of the DNA nucleotide sequence. Skeletons from a burial site recently discovered in southern Germany served as genetic material for scientists.
One of the authors of the scientific work, Michael Feldman of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said: "My work and the work of my colleagues will help to better understand the history and biology of the disease, develop effective treatments and protect humanity from serious pandemics in the future."
VLADIMIR KUZNETSOV