Massive Aztec Epidemic May Hinge On Salmonella : The Two
Kirsten Bos
"There have been different schools of thought on what this disease was. Could it have been plague? Could it have been typhoid fever? Could it have been a litany of other diseases?" says  Kirsten Bos   a molecular paleopathologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany  and an author of a new study published Monday in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
A new algorithm allowed  Bos  and her team to identify fragments of ancient salmonella DNA with extreme specificity.
"It was an analytical technique that was really the game-changer for us "  Bos  explains. While scientists have been able to extract ancient DNA from bones and other tissue  until recently it was impossible to compare that extracted DNA to a wide variety of potential matches.
But a new computer program called MALT allowed them to do just that. "The major advancement was this algorithm "  Bos  says. "It offers a method of analyzing many  many  many small DNA fragments that we get  and actually identifying  by species name  the bacteria that are represented."
 Bos  and  her  team used MALT to match up the DNA fragments extracted from teeth of epidemic victims with a database of known pathogens. The program didn't entire save them from mind-numbing work — at one point PhD student and study author Ashild Vagene had to go through the results of the program by hand.
"There have been different schools of thought on what this disease was. Could it have been plague? Could it have been typhoid fever? Could it have been a litany of other diseases?" says  [TGT]   a molecular paleopathologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany  and an author of a new study published Monday in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
A new algorithm allowed  Bos  and her team to identify fragments of ancient salmonella DNA with extreme specificity.
"It was an analytical technique that was really the game-changer for us "  Bos  explains. While scientists have been able to extract ancient DNA from bones and other tissue  until recently it was impossible to compare that extracted DNA to a wide variety of potential matches.
But a new computer program called MALT allowed them to do just that. "The major advancement was this algorithm "  Bos  says. "It offers a method of analyzing many  many  many small DNA fragments that we get  and actually identifying  by species name  the bacteria that are represented."
 Bos  and  her  team used MALT to match up the DNA fragments extracted from teeth of epidemic victims with a database of known pathogens. The program didn't entire save them from mind-numbing work — at one point PhD student and study author Ashild Vagene had to go through the results of the program by hand.