iScience (Jul 2022)

Helicobacter pylori genomes reveal Paleolithic human migration to the east end of Asia

  • Rumiko Suzuki,
  • Naruya Saitou,
  • Osamu Matsuari,
  • Seiji Shiota,
  • Takashi Matsumoto,
  • Junko Akada,
  • Nagisa Kinjo,
  • Fukunori Kinjo,
  • Kuniko Teruya,
  • Makiko Shimoji,
  • Akino Shiroma,
  • Mototsugu Kato,
  • Kazuhito Satou,
  • Takashi Hirano,
  • Masahiro Asaka,
  • Kirill Kryukov,
  • Yoshan Moodley,
  • Yoshio Yamaoka

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 25, no. 7
p. 104477

Abstract

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Summary: A virulence bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, evolved parallel to its host human, therefore, can work as a marker for tracing the human migration. We found H. pylori strains indigenous in the southernmost islands of Japanese Archipelago, Okinawa, and defined them as hspOkinawa and hpRyukyu. Genome data of the strains revealed that hspOkinawa diverged from other East Asian strains about 20,000 years ago, and that hpRyukyu diverged about 45,000 years ago. The closest strains of hpRyukyu were found from Afghanistan, Punjab, and Nepal, which suggest this strain originated in the central Asia and traveled across the Eurasian continent during Paleolithic era. The divergence date of hpRyukyu corresponds with human fossil records in Okinawa. Although it is controversial from human DNA analyses whether descendants of the Paleolithic migrants remain in the modern Japanese population, this study reveals that the bacterium of Paleolithic origin remains in the stomachs of current Japanese.

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