Metagenomic analysis of a blood stain from the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793)

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  • dc.contributor.author de Dios, Toni
  • dc.contributor.author van Dorp, Lucy
  • dc.contributor.author Charlier, Philippe
  • dc.contributor.author Morfopoulou, Sofia
  • dc.contributor.author Lizano González, Esther, 1974-
  • dc.contributor.author Bon, Celine
  • dc.contributor.author Le Bitouzé, Corinne
  • dc.contributor.author Alvarez-Estape, Marina
  • dc.contributor.author Marquès i Bonet, Tomàs, 1975-
  • dc.contributor.author Balloux, François
  • dc.contributor.author Lalueza Fox, Carles, 1965-
  • dc.date.accessioned 2020-03-27T09:27:00Z
  • dc.date.available 2020-03-27T09:27:00Z
  • dc.date.issued 2020
  • dc.description.abstract The French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) was assassinated in 1793 in his bathtub, where he was trying to find relief from the debilitating skin disease he was suffering from. At the time of his death, Marat was annotating newspapers, which got stained with his blood and were subsequently preserved by his sister. We extracted and sequenced DNA from the blood stain and also from another section of the newspaper, which we used for comparison. Results from the human DNA sequence analyses were compatible with a heterogeneous ancestry of Marat, with his mother being of French origin and his father born in Sardinia. Metagenomic analyses of the non-human reads uncovered the presence of fungal, bacterial and low levels of viral DNA. Relying on the presence/absence of microbial species in the samples, we could cast doubt on several putative infectious agents that have been previously hypothesised as the cause of his condition but for which we detect not a single sequencing read. Conversely, some of the species we detect are uncommon as environmental contaminants and may represent plausible infective agents. Based on all the available evidence, we hypothesize that Marat may have suffered from a fungal infection (seborrheic dermatitis), possibly superinfected with bacterial opportunistic pathogens.
  • dc.description.sponsorship This work was supported by Obra Social “La Caixa” and Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca (GRC2017-SGR880) (T.M.-B. and C.L.-F.), BFU2017-86471-P and PGC2018-101927-B-I00 (MINECO/FEDER, UE) (T.M.-B) and PGC2018-095931-B-100 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) (C.L.-F.). T.M-B. is also supported by a U01 MH106874 grant and Howard Hughes International Early Career and CERCA Programme del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya. S.M is funded by a Welcome Trust post-doctoral fellowship (206478/Z/17/Z). L.v.D and F.B. acknowledge financial support from the Newton Fund UK-China NSFC initiative (grant MR/P007597/1) and the BBSRC (equipment grant BB/R01356X/1). Full metagenomic reads are available at NCBI under BioProject ID PRJEB32319
  • dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
  • dc.identifier.citation de-Dios T, van Dorp L, Charlier P, Morfopoulou S, Lizano E, Bon C et al. Metagenomic analysis of a blood stain from the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793). Infect Genet Evol. 2020;80:104209. DOI: 10.1016/j.meegid.2020.104209.
  • dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.meegid.2020.104209
  • dc.identifier.issn 1567-1348
  • dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/44066
  • dc.language.iso eng
  • dc.publisher Elsevier
  • dc.relation.ispartof Infection, Genetics and Evolution. 2020;80:104209.
  • dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/BFU2017-86471-P
  • dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PGC2018-101927-B-I00
  • dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PGC2018-095931-B-100
  • dc.rights © 2020 Toni de-Dios et al. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/
  • dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  • dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/
  • dc.subject.other Metagenòmica
  • dc.subject.other ADN antic
  • dc.subject.other Infecció
  • dc.title Metagenomic analysis of a blood stain from the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793)
  • dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
  • dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

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