PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Åshild J. Vågene
AU  - Michael G. Campana
AU  - Nelly M. Robles García
AU  - Christina Warinner
AU  - Maria A. Spyrou
AU  - Aida Andrades Valtueña
AU  - Daniel Huson
AU  - Noreen Tuross
AU  - Alexander Herbig
AU  - Kirsten I. Bos
AU  - Johannes Krause
TI  - <em>Salmonella enterica</em> genomes recovered from victims of a major 16th century epidemic in Mexico
AID  - 10.1101/106740
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 106740
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/08/106740.1.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/08/106740.1.full
AB  - Indigenous populations of the Americas experienced high mortality rates during the early contact period as a result of infectious diseases, many of which were introduced by Europeans. Most of the pathogenic agents that caused these outbreaks remain unknown. Using a metagenomic tool called MALT to search for traces of ancient pathogen DNA, we were able to identify Salmonella enterica in individuals buried in an early contact era epidemic cemetery at Teposcolula-Yucundaa, Oaxaca in southern Mexico. This cemetery is linked to the 1545-1550 CE epidemic locally known as “cocoliztli”, the cause of which has been debated for over a century. Here we present two reconstructed ancient genomes for Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Paratyphi C, a bacterial cause of enteric fever. We propose that S. Paratyphi C contributed to the population decline during the 1545 cocoliztli outbreak in Mexico.One Sentence Summary Genomic evidence of enteric fever identified in an indigenous population from early contact period Mexico.