Researchers unveil new method to date ancient plague genomes
2Sep 20 2:46 AM · 3d ago · 1 article · 2 posts · 2 sources · development 2 of 2
To overcome the broad radiocarbon dating windows typical of ancient samples, the team built a phylogenetic method to narrow dating estimates and link genomes to specific historical outbreaks, as detailed in the full Science Daily writeup.
sciencedaily.com
“With COVID-19, scientists could reconstruct the spread of individual strains extremely well because the genomes came with precise timestamps. For historical pandemics, those timestamps are often missing or may cover more than 100 years, which limits our ability to interpret the genetic data”