Bolivian mummy rewrites scarlet fever's past, suggesting killer bacterium circulated centuries before colonization

Researchers have identified the genetic material of scarlet fever while examining a tooth from a naturally mummified skull housed at MUNARQ, the National Museum of Archaeology in La Paz. Using a method that reassembled previously unknown genomes from numerous short DNA fragments, they reconstructed a nearly complete, ancient genome of Streptococcus pyogenes. The reconstructed genome shows clear similarities to modern strains of the globally widespread bacterium, which can cause a variety of illnesses ranging from harmless throat infections to scarlet fever and life-threatening toxic shock syndrome.