New Y. pestis genomes shed light on plague's return after the Black Death

Researchers have deposited a preprint on bioRxiv reporting 23 newly recovered Yersinia pestis genomes from archaeological contexts associated with the Second Plague Pandemic — the wave of outbreaks that continued across Europe and the Caucasus after the initial Black Death (c. 1347–1353). The samples span approximately 270 years and were obtained from sites in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Iceland, and Armenia.

The study applies a reproducible mutation-filtering pipeline to the new genomes, situating them within the broader phylogenetic history of Y. pestis circulating during this period. The dataset substantially increases the number of Second Plague Pandemic genomes available for analysis, enabling researchers to examine the post-Black Death epidemiology of plague with greater resolution than was previously possible.

The work is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed. The findings are of particular interest to researchers working in ancient DNA, historical epidemiology, and evolutionary genomics of bacterial pathogens, and will also be of broad relevance to educators and students studying the genomic methods now routinely applied to ancient infectious disease.