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The notable Ötzi , a man murder about 5,300 year ago in the Italian Alps , had what ’s now see the world ’s oldest known type ofHelicobacter pylorus , a bacterium that can stimulate ulcers and gastric cancer , a new bailiwick discover .
It ’s unclear whether the ancient iceman did , in fact , have ulceration or gastric Crab because his stomach tissue did n’t survive . Today , about half of the world ’s human universe hasH.pyloriin their gut , but only one in 10 people develop a condition from the bacterium , the researcher pronounce .
Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved mummy discovered in the Alps in 1991, carried an ancient pathogen in his stomach and intestines.
However , an analysis of tissues from Ötzi ’s gastrointestinal tract record that his immune system had react to the potentially virulent strain , suggesting he might have felt ominous fromH.pylorisymptoms on the day he died . [ Mummy Melodrama : Top 9 Secrets About Otzi the Iceman ]
" We showed the presence of marking protein which we see today in patients taint withHelicobacter , " study jumper lead author Frank Maixner , a microbiologist at the European Academy in Bozen / Bolzano in Italy , said in a statement .
The researchers also canvass the specificH.pyloristrain that Ötzi carried . They obtain that , although it was singular , it was strikingly similar to a strain seen in ancient Asia but not to those in northern Africa as the research worker had suspected .
The mummified body of Ötzi.
Hikers discovered Ötzi ’s mummified body in a glacier in 1991 , and his clay now reside at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano , Italy . Studies on the Copper Age military personnel hint that Ötzi likely lived with aches and annoyance — during his lifetime , he had bad teeth and knees ; a genetic predisposition to heart disease ; lactose intolerance ; arthritis;a possible fount of Lyme disease ; and injury suggest that he get from an pointer trauma and ablow to the headbefore he died at somewhere between 40 and 50 year honest-to-god .
Despite these malady , Ötzi probably would have exist for another 10 to 20 yr if he had n’t been bump off , study co - writer Albert Zink , the head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Academy , said during a intelligence conference yesterday ( Jan. 6 ) .
Needle in a rick
A close up of the iceman’s hand.
The investigator were rum about whether Ötzi carried the ancient word form ofH.pylori , which enquiry suggest has existed in humans for at least 100,000 class .
But the new study was no easy task . The scientist deice theheavily tattooed mummyand used an section made by an earlier review of Ötzi to take tissue paper samples . The squad extract 12 biopsy samples from the tum and intestine , and analyzed the genetic stuff from each .
" We had to carve up theHelicobacter pylorisequences from the other transmissible material , " which include the DNA from the hatchet man himself , nutrient he had eaten , soil bacterium that invaded the consistency , and other textile , study co - aged source Thomas Rattei , the head of the Division of Computational Systems Biology at the University of Vienna in Austria , said at the word group discussion . " This was like searching [ for ] a needle in the hayrick . "
Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigl (left) and Dr. Albert Zink (right) taking a sample from the Iceman in November 2010.
But they did feel it . Moreover , Ötzi’sH.pyloristrain was heavily fragmented because of abjection , providing more evidence that it was n’t the result of modern contamination but rather the actual ancient strain that had infected him during the Copper Age , Rattei said . [ Album : A New Face for Ötzi the Iceman Mummy ]
Migration clue
After sequencing the ancientH.pyloristrain , the researcher compared it to other known strains of the pathogen .
X-ray imaging of Ötzi’s stomach and intestine.
Interestingly , scientists can useH.pylorias a shaft to study human migration . The human genome typically mutate lento over time , butH.pylorimutates quickly . It changes so fast , in fact , that it ’s usually unequaled to each geographical population . What ’s more , if one group of people encounter another — by migrate to a new area , for example — theirH.pyloristrains can unify , leaving genetical clue about the mixed tune ’s screen background .
Furthermore , theseH.pyloristrainsinfect only humankind , so it ca n’t be carry by other animals , the investigator said .
" That is why we studiedHelicobacter pyloriand why it ’s so important for illustrating all of these wonderful prehistorical human migrations , " said co - aged author Yoshan Moodley , a professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Venda in South Africa .
forward-looking EuropeanH.pyloristrains are mixed with those from ancient Europe and ancient northern Africa , but researchers are unsure when the northern African people migrated to the continent . They hoped thatÖtziwould help them identify when that event occurred , the investigator articulate .
But they were in for a surprise . Ötzi had very slight grounds of an African strain . Instead , hisH.pyloriwas close related to strains find in ancient Europe and key and south Asia today .
" This would conduct us to believe that the population that Ötzi or the hatchet man strain belong to must have been the original universe that inhabited the stomach of Europeans 5,300 years ago , " Moodley suppose . " We can say now that the waves of migration that bring in these AfricanHelicobacter pyloriinto Europe had not hap , or at least not pass off in earnest , by thetime the hatchet man was around … 5,300 years ago . "
Of of course , Ötzi is just one mortal , so it ’s impossible to say definitively that the northern African people had n’t migrate to Europe during his meter . But it does offer a small hint , the researchers said .
The research worker plan to studyH. pylorimore in the future , and are already in talks with expert who study mummies in South America and Asia . Egyptian mum can not be included because their stomachs , which would hold any potentialH. pyloribacteria , were removed during the mumification necrosis process .
The study was publish online today ( Jan. 7 ) in thejournal Science .
