Oetzi_the_Iceman_Rekonstruktion_1 (Recreated model of Iceman)

Photo by Thilo Parg

Iceman reveals a frightening and revolutionary phenomena that suggests that previously considered ancient bacterial strains are much more recent than we had thought.  “Otzi the Iceman” is a mummy discovered in 1991 inside a glacier in the Tyrolean Alps of Italy.  Scientists have done more tests on Iceman’s body than on any known mummy in history but they have also found out a lot about him and human life during his time through stomach, bowel, tooth, skin, and just about any part of his remaining tissue.  For starters, scientific research has theorized that he was a farmer living in Europe over 5300 years ago when he was murdered and left for dead in the freezing Alps.  But Iceman never ceases to provide new scientific insight into human migration and behavior thousands of years ago as scientists have recently discovered an ancient strain of Helicobacter Pyori, a common strain of the stomach bug which is known to cause painful ulcers in the stomach, in Iceman’s gut tissue.

Hp (Helicobacter Pyori) is one of the most common bacterial genomes in existence today as it is found in different strains all over the world and “causes ulcers, cancer, and gastritis—the inflammation of the lining of the stomach—in about 10% of people,” says Ann Gibbons.  Scientists have separated the three main origins of the genome to three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe, each with their own distinct strains of Hp.  The modern hpEurope strain is theorized to have shared “elements of DNA with types of H. pylori from both Africa and Asia” says Gibbons.  This would suggest an ancient collision of the two strains in one human being who than spread it to more and more people who then migrated to Europe.

Until recently, no one could test this theory.  Months ago, imaging conducted on Iceman’s stomach and gut suggested that his gut tissue and stomach contents were quite well preserved so scientists jumped right to testing them through multiple biopsies.  They discovered two things: he had a full stomach (before he died he stuffed down a bunch of ibex meat) and that he inhabited an strain of hp traced to India and South Asia.  This tells us that “The ancestors of early European farmers such as Ötzi must have carried H. pylori with DNA from Asian strains perhaps in the Middle East before they migrated to Europe. Then, new immigrants carrying African microbes arrived in Europe much later, after Ötzi lived. The two types of microbes mixed in these migrants,creating today’s European strain much more recently than expected” according to Gibbons.

All this data goes to show is that the formation of the “modern” form of hpEurope looks like it had been formed by a just a few unlucky individuals “who were coinfected with two strains, producing a particularly adaptive hybrid type that spread rapidly in Europe,” Gibbons indicates.  This shows scientists that bacterial genomes can adapt to human activity and migration much faster than we thought they could and thanks to the wonders of Iceman’s health problems, we can now trace more deeply the behavior of ancient vs. modern bacterial genomes.

Original Article

 

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