And if you’ve made it this far, here’s a bonus photo the Fishmongers site: Richard Madgwick (left), Jack Randell (middle) and Jessica Peto (right) in the Bone Idle Chamber of Fishmongers Swallet. 📷Taken by @archaedelle.bsky.social

We estimate B. recurrentis diverged from its closest tick-borne ancestor (B. duttonii) between 6,000–4,000 BP, coinciding with the spread of secondary animal products such as wool-based textiles, potentially aiding the transmission shift. 🐑

We discovered 4 cases of Borrelia recurrentis (louse-borne relapsing fever) in Britain, from individuals at 4 different sites dating to ~600 to 2,300 years ago. including one genome with a remarkable 29X coverage (with WGS sequencing) 🦷

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬
Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

UCL fox reference genome @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social