Evaluating bacterial pathogen DNA preservation in museum osteological collections

Abstract

Reports of bacterial pathogen DNA sequences obtained from archaeological bone specimens raise the possibility of greatly improving our understanding of the history of infectious diseases. However, the survival of pathogen DNA over long time periods is poorly characterized, and scepticism remains about the reliability of these data. In order to explore the survival of bacterial pathogen DNA in bone specimens, we analysed samples from 59 eighteenth and twentieth century individuals known to have been infected with either Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Treponema pallidum . No reproducible evidence of surviving pathogen DNA was obtained, despite the use of extraction and PCR-amplification methods determined to be highly sensitive. These data suggest that previous studies need to be interpreted with caution, and we propose that a much greater emphasis is placed on understanding how pathogen DNA survives in archaeological material, and how its presence can be properly verified and used.