With that in mind, the team turned to targeted capture sequencing to generate whole-genome sequences for three of the HSV-1 isolates and a partial genome sequence for another isolate. "Only genetic samples that are hundreds or even thousands of years old will allow us to understand how DNA viruses such as herpes and monkeypox, as well as our own immune systems, are adapting in response to each other," she explained. "We need to do deep time investigations to understand how DNA viruses like this evolve." "Facial herpes hides in its host for life and only transmits through oral contact, so mutations occur slowly over centuries and millennia," co-senior and co-corresponding author Charlotte Houldcroft, a genetics researcher at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. A single sample came from an infected man living in the Ural Mountain region of Russia some 1,500 years ago, while three samples spanning the 6th to 17th centuries came from infected individuals in the UK or Holland. "However, something happened around 5,000 years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake all others, possibly an increase in transmissions, which could have been linked to kissing."Īs they reported in Science Advances on Wednesday, Scheib and her colleagues used metagenomic sequencing to screen thousands of archaeological samples collected over time from sites across Europe, uncovering four HSV-1-containing tooth samples reaching back to the Iron Age. "Every primate species has a form of herpes, so we assume it has been with us since our own species left Africa," co-senior and co-corresponding author Christiana Scheib, head of Tartu University's ancient DNA lab and a research fellow at the University of Cambridge's St. Changes in the practice of kissing, they speculated, may have played a role in this. NEW YORK – An international team led by University of Cambridge investigators has used ancient DNA analyses to retrace the history and spread of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), the culprit behind lip sores commonly known as cold sores. Advances in Clinical Genomics Profiling.
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