Pathogen Species Identification from Metagenomes in Ancient Remains: The Challenge of Identifying Human Pathogenic Species of Trypanosomatidae via Bioinformatic Tools.

ABSTRACT: Accurate species identification from ancient DNA samples is a difficult task that would shed light on the evolutionary history of pathogenic microorganisms. The field of palaeomicrobiology has undoubtedly benefited from the advent of untargeted metagenomic approaches that use next-generation sequencing methodologies. Nevertheless, assigning ancient DNA at the species level is a challenging process. Recently, the gut microbiome analysis of three pre-Columbian Andean mummies (Santiago-Rodriguez et al., 2016) has called into question the identification of Leishmania in South America. The accurate assignment would be important because it will provide some key elements that are linked to the evolutionary scenario for visceral leishmaniasis agents in South America. Here, we recovered the

SUBMITTER: Sereno D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6115896 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature