TY - JOUR T1 - Eighteenth century <em>Yersinia pestis</em> genomes reveal the long-term persistence of an historical plague focus JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/036509 SP - 036509 AU - Kirsten I. Bos AU - Alexander Herbig AU - Jason Sahl AU - Nicholas Waglechner AU - Mathieu Fourment AU - Stephen A. Forrest AU - Jennifer Klunk AU - Verena J. Schuenemann AU - Debi Poinar AU - Melanie Kuch AU - Brian Golding AU - Olivier Dutour AU - Paul Keim AU - David M. Wagner AU - Edward C. Holmes AU - Johannes Krause AU - Hendrik N Poinar Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/01/12/036509.abstract N2 - The 14th-18th century pandemic of Yersinia pestis caused devastating disease outbreaks in Europe for almost 400 years. The reasons for plague’s persistence and abrupt disappearance in Europe are poorly understood, but could have been due to either the presence of now-extinct plague foci in Europe itself, or successive disease introductions from other locations. Here we present five Y. pestis genomes from one of the last European outbreaks of plague, from 1722 in Marseille, France. The lineage identified has not been found in any extant Y. pestis foci sampled to date, and has its ancestry in strains obtained from victims of the 14th century Black Death. These data suggest the existence of a previously uncharacterized historical plague focus that persisted for at least three centuries. We propose that this disease source may have been responsible for the many resurgences of plague in Europe following the Black Death. ER -