In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. bp), populations
across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline,. However, the …

Most autoimmune diseases are caused by the interplay between common genetic risk
variants and environmental factors. New studies of ancient genomes suggest that many of …

De novo assembly of ancient metagenomic datasets is a challenging task. Ultra-short
fragment size and characteristic postmortem damage patterns of sequenced ancient DNA …

Most human pathogens are of zoonotic origin. Many emerged during prehistory, coinciding
with domestication providing more opportunities for spillover from original host species …

Several disease-causing bacteria have transitioned from tick-borne to louse-borne
transmission, a process associated with increased virulence and genome reduction …

The rise of zoonotic diseases in prehistory is often associated with the Neolithic agricultural
transition,. In particular, plague has been linked to population declines in Late Neolithic …

In a recent publication in this journal, Reynoso-García et al. used shotgun sequencing to
analyze human coprolites (paleofeces) from two pre-Columbian contexts in Puerto Rico to …