Infectious Voyagers: DNA suggests Columbus took syphilis to Europe

摘要

Goodbye Columbus, hello syphilis. when Renaissance-era folk bade farewell to Christopher Columbus and his crew, little did they know that the New World explorers would return with syphilis infections that eventually triggered devastating outbreaks of the sexually transmitted disease in Europe. That's the implication of the first study to probe the genetic makeup and evolutionary relationships of strains of bacteria, known as treponemes, that cause syphilis and related diseases.