NEWS Within the framework of the UCMR Distinguished Guests Seminars Series, Professor Johannes Krause gives a lecture on the origin of the Black Death and the genetic history of the Plague.
Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
ImageThomas Victor, © Thomas Victor, phone: +49 179 7344480, mail@thomasvictor.de; Abdruck und Veroeffentlichung nur gegen Honorar und BelegexemplarTime: Thursday 24 November at 15-16
Venue: on Zoom
Registration: Please register here to join the webinar
Lecturer: Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
High-throughput DNA sequencing has revolutionized the field of archaeogenetics in the past decade, providing a better understanding of human genetic history, past population dynamics and host pathogen interactions through time. Targeted DNA capture approaches have allowed reconstructing complete ancient bacterial genomes providing direct insights into the evolution and origin of some of the most infamous bacterial pathogens known to humans such as Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague.
Ancient Y. pestis genomes spanning over 5 000 years of human history from the Stone Age to modern times provide novel insights into the evolution and direct evidence for the timing and emergence of major virulence factors essential for the transmission of Y. pestis by fleas. The oldest reconstructed genomes of Y. pestis fully capable of causing the bubonic form from the Eastern European Bronze Age provides evidence for prehistoric epidemics of this form of the disease which have emerged more than 1 000 years earlier than previously suggested. Temporal studies of pathogens might thus throw new light on the origin of human diseases and potentially allow predicting and preventing further transmissions and disseminations in the future.
Prof. Dr. Johannes Krause earned his Ph.D. in Genetics at Leipzig University. He was appointed junior professor for Paleogenetics at the University of Tübingen in 2010, and subsequently full professor for Archaeo- and Paleogenetics at the same university in 2013. In 2014, he became founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, heading the Department of Archaeogenetics. In 2018 he became full professor at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He is one of the founding directors of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (MHAAM), established in 2017. In 2020 he was reappointed to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and his department moved to Leipzig.
Prof. Dr. Krause focuses on the analysis of ancient DNA to investigate such topics as pathogens from historic and prehistoric epidemics, human genetic history and human evolution. He contributed substantially to deciphering the Neanderthal genome and the shared genetic heritage of Neanderthals and modern humans. In 2010, while working at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, he discovered the first genetic evidence of the Denisovans, an extinct hominin discovered in Siberia. His recent work includes revealing the genetic heritage of ancient Egyptians, reconstructing the first Pleistocene African genomes, uncovering the source of the epidemic plague bacteria that periodically caused historic and prehistoric epidemics in Europe, and clarifying the complex history of Europe’s prehistoric mass migrations.
Krause has more than 210 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Reviews Genetics, PNAS, Nature Microbiology, and Nature Communications. He also authored two international bestsellers translated in more than 20 languages.
