EXCERPT

[Mark Pallen, Professor of Microbial Genomics at Warwick Medical School] explained the importance of the breakthrough, "Most other attempts to recover DNA sequences from historical or ancient samples have suffered from the risk of contamination, because they rely on amplification of DNA in the laboratory, plus they have required onerous optimisation of target-specific assays. The beauty of metagenomics is that it provides a simple but highly informative, assumption-free, one-size-fits-all approach that works in a wide variety of contexts. A few months ago we showed that metagenomics allowed us to identify an E. coli outbreak strains from faecal samples and a few weeks ago a similar approach was shown by another group to deliver a leprosy genome from historical material".

SOURCE

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-tuberculosis-genomes-recovered-year-hungarian.html

ARTICLE

Chan, J.Z., et al. 2013. Metagenomic analysis of tuberculosis in a mummy. N Engl J Med 369:289-290. (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1302295)