Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death

Thursday 16 June 2022

Hello Nature readers,
Today we trace the epicentre of the Black Death, learn that climate change is turning more of Central Asia into desert and consider how light and sound pollution has disconnected us from nature.

An engraved tombstone of a victim of the black death recovered from the Kara-Djigach burial site in modern-day Kyrgyzstan

An engraved tombstone of a person who died from the Black Death plague, from the Kara-Djigach cemetery in what is now Kyrgyzstan. (Credit: P.-G. Borbone, M. A. Spyrou et al./Nature)

Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death

A strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the Black Death pandemic in the 1300s, has been traced back to a fourteenth-century outbreak in what is now Kyrgyzstan. "It is like finding the place where all the strains come together, like with coronavirus where we have Alpha, Delta, Omicron all coming from this strain in Wuhan," says palaeogeneticist and co-author Johannes Krause. The area was on the Silk Road trade route, which might have helped the plague to spread westwards.

Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Nature paper

Deserts are spreading in Central Asia

Deserts are spreading northwards in Central Asia as a result of global warming. A study has found that, since the 1980s, regions with a desert climate have expanded by as much as 100 kilometres in northern Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, in southern Kazakhstan and around the Junggar Basin in northwestern China. The effect of reduced rainfall and warmer temperatures will alter the plants that grow in these regions, and the animals that rely on them.

Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Geophysical Research Letters paper

First public statue of female scientist in Italy

Astronomer Margherita Hack has become the first female scientist to be honoured with a public statue in Italy. Hack, who was born in 1922 and died in 2013, was a high-profile figure for decades in the country, where she was a prominent science communicator and is credited with inspiring generations of young women to pursue a career in science. The bronze monument, by Italian artist Sissi, was unveiled on 13 June — a day after what would have been Hack's 100th birthday — next to the main campus of the University of Milan.

Nature | 3 min read

Left, a statue of Margherita Hack gazing towards the sky in Milan, Italy; right, a portrait of Margherita Hack in her home, 2012

Margherita Hack (pictured in 2012) is depicted in a statue unveiled on 13 June in Milan. (Credit: Left, Nick Zonna/ipa-agency/Shutterstock; right, Massimo Sestini/Mondadori via Getty)

Quote of the day

"Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have been killed in an undeclared global war against nature and the people who defend it."

The bodies of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous adviser Bruno Araújo Pereira have been found after they disappeared while researching a book about sustainable development in the Amazon. Environmental journalist Jonathan Watts calls for their crucial work to continue. (The Guardian | 9 min read)

Features & opinion

Africa's outbreak sentinels

In Parrot's Beak, a strip of land in Guinea that borders Sierra Leone and Liberia, agriculture and civil war is pushing people into close proximity with bats, increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola. Researchers and public-health leaders are taking a 'One Health' approach to tackle examples such as this, in which environmental, animal and human health intersect. Rwanda leads the way: it has clear plans and policies for dealing with zoonotic infections and has integrated One Health approaches into university curricula. It has also developed multidisciplinary rapid-response teams and has created decentralized laboratories in the animal and human health sectors to strengthen surveillance.

Nature Medicine | 10 min read

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We have blinded the world

By flooding the world with light and sound, humans have waylaid migrating birds, muffled bats' echolocation and lured turtle hatchlings away from the sea. We have also cut ourselves off from the nature that sustains us. "More than a third of humanity, and almost 80 percent of North Americans, can no longer see the Milky Way," notes science writer Ed Yong. In an excerpt from his new book, Yong makes a rousing call to slash sensory pollution, illustrated by stunning animal portraits by Shayan Asgharnia.

The Atlantic | 26 min read

Why we must delve into the microbiome

Ten years after the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium published the first big survey of microbial diversity in the human body, we've only just begun, argues microbiologist Ruth Ley. "It's time to build on this early work, and revamp the project to represent humanity in all its complexity," she writes. "A vast new diversity analysis of humanity's microbiome, and of the broader vertebrate microbiome, will finally place our own species' data in the context of the tree of life."

Nature | 5 min read

Let me introduce you to the pumpkin toadlet (Brachycephalus spp.), a group of frogs so tiny that when they jump, they never make the landing. Their teeny-tiny inner ears just don't have room for a functioning vestibular system to keep them oriented — resulting in comical, but totally harmless, flailing. "Oh my God, the derpiness," says biologist Martha Muñoz.

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Thanks for reading,
Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
With contributions by Nicky Phillips