瑞典古遗传学中心Tom van der Valk小组近日取得一项新成果。经过不懈努力，他们从猛犸象遗骸中获得古代宿主相关微生物。这一研究成果发表在2025年9月2日出版的国际学术期刊《细胞》上。
在这项研究中，研究组分析了483具猛犸象遗骸的古代微生物DNA，跨度超过100万年，其中包括440个新测序的和未发表的110万年前草原猛犸象样本。通过宏基因组筛选、污染物过滤、损伤模式分析和系统发育推断，该研究组确定了310种与猛犸象不同组织相关的微生物。虽然大多数微生物是环境或死后的定植，但该团队恢复了六种与宿主相关的微生物分支的基因组证据，包括放线菌、巴氏杆菌、链球菌和丹毒杆菌。其中一些分支含有假定的毒力因子，包括一种与巴氏杆菌相关的细菌，这种细菌以前被认为与非洲大象的死亡有关。值得注意的是，课题组研究人员从最古老的猛犸象样本中重建了丹毒的部分基因组，代表了迄今为止最古老的经鉴定的宿主相关微生物DNA。这项工作证明了获得古代动物微生物组的潜力，这可以为进一步的古生态和进化研究提供信息。
研究人员表示，古代基因组研究广泛探索了人类与微生物的相互作用，但对非人类动物的研究仍然有限。
附：英文原文
Title: Ancient host-associated microbes obtained from mammoth remains
Author: Benjamin Guinet, Nikolay Oskolkov, Kelsey Moreland, Marianne Dehasque, J. Camilo Chacón-Duque, Anders Angerbjrn, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Gleb Danilov, Foteini Kanellidou, Andrew C. Kitchener, Hélose Muller, Valerii Plotnikov, Albert Protopopov, Alexei Tikhonov, Laura Termes, Grant Zazula, Peter Mortensen, Lena Grigorieva, Michael Richards, Beth Shapiro, Adrian M. Lister, Sergey Vartanyan, David Díez-del-Molino, Anders Gtherstrm, Patrícia Penerová, Pavel Nikolskiy, Love Dalén, Tom van der Valk
Issue&Volume: 2025-09-02
Abstract: Ancient genomic studies have extensively explored human-microbial interactions, yet research on non-human animals remains limited. In this study, we analyzed ancient microbial DNA from 483 mammoth remains spanning over 1 million years, including 440 newly sequenced and unpublished samples from a 1.1-million-year-old steppe mammoth. Using metagenomic screening, contaminant filtering, damage pattern analysis, and phylogenetic inference, we identified 310 microbes associated with different mammoth tissues. While most microbes were environmental or post-mortem colonizers, we recovered genomic evidence of six host-associated microbial clades spanning Actinobacillus, Pasteurella, Streptococcus, and Erysipelothrix. Some of these clades contained putative virulence factors, including a Pasteurella-related bacterium that had previously been linked to the deaths of African elephants. Notably, we reconstructed partial genomes of Erysipelothrix from the oldest mammoth sample, representing the oldest authenticated host-associated microbial DNA to date. This work demonstrates the potential of obtaining ancient animal microbiomes, which can inform further paleoecological and evolutionary research.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.08.003
Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00917-1