Analysis of a medieval strain of mycobacterium leprae from the deserted medieval village site of Wharram Percy, Yorkshire, UK

Abstract

M.leprae is one of the two causative agents of human leprosy; the other being M.lepromatosis. Like M.tuberculosis complex species and other pathogens, M.leprae exhibits phylogeography, meaning that strain variation is associated with geographical regions. Strain genotyping, usually achieved by studying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), can provide information on likely origins of the disease and human migration routes in antiquity. We have previously confirmed the presence of an M.leprae SNP-type 3 strain in G708, the skeleton of a 10th-11th century individual excavated from the deserted medieval village (DMV) site of Wharram Percy, Yorkshire, UK. The present study has applied additional SNP typing methods to this case to determine the leprosy subtype. This work shows the isolate responsible for leprosy in individual G708 was of the 3I-1 subtype but with some polymorphic loci indicative of other SNP types, which could be considered as ancestral to modern exemplars of this genotype.