Palaeomicrobiology of Tuberculosis.

The study of tuberculosis palaeomicrobiology has proved to be most rewarding. Due to the characteristic palaeopathological lesions, tuberculosis was recognised in archaeological material and was the fi rst infectious disease to be studied by modern biomolecular methods. The combination of a tough bacterial cell wall and GC-rich DNA has resulted in excellent DNA preservation in some specimens. A wide range of specifi c molecular diagnostic and typing methods, developed by clinical microbiologists, are available. These have been applied successfully to archaeological material, resulting in the genotyping of the infecting organisms. There has been a fruitful interaction with modern genomic studies, and ancient fi ndings support current views on the evolution of the species in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Questions remain to be answered, including the nature of pre-Columbian tuberculosis in the Americas, and the evolution of tuberculosis in animals. The important topics of interactions with other pathogenic microbes, and the host, are now being explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]