a study published<\/a> in the prestigious journal PLOS Pathogens<\/i>. \u201cIt\u2019s some of the most fun I\u2019ve had in academics.\u201d<\/p>\nThe project\u2019s outcome resolves what had been an ongoing academic debate: The Justinianic Plague that started in A.D. 541 can indeed be placed on the family tree of the disease, linking it to the well-known pandemic of the 14th\u201317th centuries, and finally to a third pandemic that began around 1850.<\/p>\n
The implications resonate both with history and with civilization today. Not only is the first pandemic tied to the other two, but it almost certainly began in Asia\u2014not in Africa, as previously thought. And any deeper understanding of the disease (known technically as Yersinia pestis<\/i>), which has potential as a bioterror weapon, makes our world a little safer.<\/p>\n
Wagner recounts the two-year-long sequence of events with the ease of a narrator who played a pivotal role in the outcome. His decade of experience working with plague activity in northern Arizona, initially among prairie dogs, helped establish the reputation of MGGen as a world-class center of expertise on the topic.<\/p>\n
That led to an ongoing collaboration between Wagner and colleagues at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Munich, who, together with individuals from State Collection for Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy in Munich, led the overall study. Much of their joint work is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which Wagner said is interested in techniques that could be used following a bioterrorism event to identify the agent and determine its origins.<\/p>\n
Paul Keim<\/strong>, director of MGGen and a co-author, said \u201cinternational plague collaborations are increasingly difficult due to government regulations restricting material exchanges. This work succeeded through team perseverance and the electronic exchange of data.\u201d<\/p>\nAfter the discovery of an ancient burial site near Munich, Wagner and MGGen were brought in by the Germans as experts on plague DNA genotyping. The age of the remains presented an opportunity to answer the historical debate by extracting some of the teeth, grinding them up and searching for traces of Y. pestis<\/i> DNA.<\/p>\n
But there the story adds a layer of complexity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized that for the results to be accepted by the scientific community, we couldn\u2019t do the work in this laboratory,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n
Ironically, MGGen\u2019s status and reputation in plague DNA research meant it would not withstand the scrutiny of experts in ancient DNA, a field that demands its own set of protocols and protections against contamination by modern DNA. The highly critical community had rejected an earlier study about the Justinianic Plague because, in part, it did not meet their extraordinary standards.<\/p>\n
Yet in the end, MGGen did contribute because two research associates under Wagner\u2019s guidance combined to form a team that blended thoughtful creativity with meticulous technical skills.<\/p>\n
Dawn Birdsell<\/strong> and Katy Parise<\/strong> rose to the challenge of working with ancient DNA, and while playing their part in a centuries-long chronicle of science and history, they made a little of their own.<\/p>\nTo advise the German scientists by generating their own results, the pair needed to rethink MGGen\u2019s procedures and capabilities to address two daunting obstacles: the fragility of the ancient DNA samples and the uncompromising protocols of analyzing them.<\/p>\n
During long nights of contemplation, Birdsell, with a Ph.D. in physiology and a noted talent for genotyping, imagined each step of an elaborate, systematic approach to assaying ancient DNA in a lab designed for the modern stuff. She knew that even the most minor details would face severe skepticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese samples are so ancient that they\u2019re in the range where our technology has certain limitations,\u201d Birdsell said. She redesigned the lab\u2019s protocol, then engineered a process to assure the process was working properly while avoiding the risk of contamination. The resulting strategy was her own, and had never been published.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a profession that really is 50 percent creativity and 50 percent linear and logical,\u201d Birdsell said, which is precisely why she recruited Parise, who was finishing her MS in biology at NAU while working on the project. \u201cIt was my observation that she was a meticulous, careful technician,\u201d Birdsell said.<\/p>\n
As Parise put it, \u201cI think it just makes sense to do the absolute best you can the first time, so I take my time, I think about things and I don\u2019t rush. We didn\u2019t have the time to make any mistakes and the samples were way too precious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, after Parise\u2019s efforts to confirm all the protocols through lab experiments, Birdsell handled the ancient samples.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always very clear that I would process the final sample because I wanted the responsibility on me,\u201d Birdsell said. \u201cIt also motivated me. You just execute and stick with the planning and don\u2019t deviate.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the analysis turned up ancient plague DNA, the two knew their work had paid off. When their collaborators\u2019 two labs in Germany\u2014labs specifically designed for the work\u2014confirmed the results, \u201cwe were pretty thrilled,\u201d Birdsell said. \u201cIf anything, it\u2019s a story of what a successful team can produce.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From within an ancient German gravesite to laboratories under the harshest extremes of scientific scrutiny, traces of DNA from a deadly disease illuminate the cold pages of history with modern insight. How a plague from 1,500 years ago\u2014long a reputed ancestor to the notorious Black Death\u2014found its way back to relevance is a story of…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":19823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11],"tags":[307,311,308,312,313,306,24,32,309,310],"class_list":["post-19580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors","category-research-academics","tag-david-wagner","tag-dawn-birdsell","tag-justinianic-plauge","tag-katy-parise","tag-mggen","tag-microbial-genetics-and-genomics-laboratory","tag-northern-arizona-university","tag-paul-keim","tag-plos-pathogens","tag-yersinia-pestis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}