Wednesday, February 7, 2007.
4:15 PM.
Location: Morrison Institute Winter Colloquium, Herrin Hall, Room T-175
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of human tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills 2 million people every year. Tuberculosis has traditionally been referred to as an evolutionary young human disease, which was acquired from domestic animals during the Neolithic transition 15,000 years ago. However, recent advances in comparative genomics and bacterial population genetics have shed new light on the evolutionary history of tuberculosis and challenged this view. In particular, human tuberculosis seems to be much older than previously estimated, and our recent findings suggest that host-pathogen co-evolution may have occurred during these extended periods of host-pathogen associations. Following up on these initial observations, we are using a combined approach, analyzing mycobacterial DNA recovered from ancient human remains, as well as from contemporary tuberculosis patients to learn more about the evolution of M. tuberculosis. A longstanding association between different human and mycobacterial populations also implies that M. tuberculosis might have accompanied modern humans on their migration out of Africa, as well as on their more recent journeys of exploration and colonization. We believe that our combined molecular approach will hold the key to answering some these important evolutionary questions.