Black Death Casts a Genetic Shadow Over England

The Black Death continues to cast a shadow across England.

NewScientist.com news service
Colin Barras

Although the modern English population is more cosmopolitan than ever, the plagues known as the Black Death killed so many people in the Middle Ages that, to this day, genetic diversity is lower in England than it was in the 11th century, according to a new analysis.

Rus Hoelzel at the University of Durham, UK and his colleagues looked at the mitochondrial DNA from human remains at 4th and 11th century archaeological sites in England, and compared them to samples from the modern population stored on DNA databases such as GenBank. They found there was more variation in the ancient mitochondrial DNA sequences than in modern sequences.

Hoelzel thinks random genetic drift may have lowered genetic diversity naturally. But the large unexpected drop in diversity was more likely to have been caused by population crashes following major outbreaks of the Black Death in England during the 1340s and the 1660s.

“The main factors in support of a role for plague are the timing and the fact that it affected different families [to a differing degree,” says Hoelzel.Vulnerable families

The Black Death did not reach England until the mid-14th century. No-one knows exactly what caused it, with the bubonic plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, and various viruses all having been implicated at some point.

However, it is known that plague affected some families more than others, so their mitochondrial DNA would have been less common among survivors, Hoelzel says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12393-black-death-casts-a-genetic-shadow-over-england.html

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=174

2007-08-02