Urbanization and genetic homogenization in the medieval Low Countries revealed through a ten-century paleogenomic study of the city of Sint-Truiden

Varování

Publikace nespadá pod Filozofickou fakultu, ale pod Středoevropský technologický institut. Oficiální stránka publikace je na webu muni.cz.

Autoři	BENEKER Owyn MOLINARO Ludovica GUELLIL Meriam SASSO Stefania KABRAL Helja BONUCCI Biancamaria GAENS Noah D'ATANASIO Eugenia MEZZAVILLA Massimo DELBRASSINE Helios BRAET Linde LAMBERT Bart DECKERS Pieterjan BIAGINI Simone Andrea HUI Ruoyun BECELAERE Sara GEYPEN Jan HOEBRECKX Maxim BERK Birgit DRIESEN Petra PIJPELINK April PHILIP van Damme VANHOUTTE Sofie NATASJA De Winter SAAG Lehti PAGANI Luca TAMBETS Kristiina SCHEIB Christiana L LARMUSEAU Maarten H D KIVISILD Toomas
Rok publikování	2025
Druh	Článek v odborném periodiku
Časopis / Zdroj	GENOME BIOLOGY
Fakulta / Pracoviště MU	Středoevropský technologický institut
Citace
www	https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-025-03580-z
Doi	https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03580-z
Klíčová slova	Urbanization; Palaeo-genomics; Low countries; Medieval; Migration; Plague; Flanders
Přiložené soubory	s13059-025-03580-z__3_.pdf
Popis	BackgroundProcesses shaping the formation of the present-day population structure in highly urbanized Northern Europe are still poorly understood. Gaps remain in our understanding of when and how currently observable regional differences emerged and what impact city growth, migration, and disease pandemics during and after the Middle Ages had on these processes.ResultsWe perform low-coverage sequencing of the genomes of 338 individuals spanning the eighth to the eighteenth centuries in the city of Sint-Truiden in Flanders, in the northern part of Belgium. The early/high medieval Sint-Truiden population was more heterogeneous, having received migrants from Scotland or Ireland, and displayed less genetic relatedness than observed today between individuals in present-day Flanders. We find differences in gene variants associated with high vitamin D blood levels between individuals with Gaulish or Germanic ancestry. Although we find evidence of a Yersinia pestis infection in 5 of the 58 late medieval burials, we were unable to detect a major population-scale impact of the second plague pandemic on genetic diversity or on the elevated differentiation of immunity genes.ConclusionsThis study reveals that the genetic homogenization process in a medieval city population in the Low Countries was protracted for centuries. Over time, the Sint-Truiden population became more similar to the current population of the surrounding Limburg province, likely as a result of reduced long-distance migration after the high medieval period, and the continuous process of local admixture of Germanic and Gaulish ancestries which formed the genetic cline observable today in the Low Countries.