Medieval texts reveal history of sheep pox virus
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An international team of researchers led by University College Dublin extracted DNA from medieval parchment to reconstruct the 3,700-year history of ovine poxvirus, a virus harmful to sheep and goats but harmless to humans.
The scientists examined ancient texts including the Gospels of York, a 1,000-year-old illuminated manuscript, and the Corpus Glossary, one of the earliest English dictionaries, as well as other medieval codes from across Europe.
Researchers found viral DNA preserved in the animal skins used to make the parchment, demonstrating the disease spread long before the modern era. The team discovered the virus’s genetic material on multiple pages within the same manuscripts, indicating infected animals provided the materials for their creation. Unlike the human version of smallpox, the ovine poxvirus genome remained stable over millennia, allowing scientists to trace its evolution.
Kevin Daly explained that parchment production, once a dying craft, now appears to have preserved a significant record of the past, holding not just cultural and historical information but also biological data. The findings may help future efforts to combat the virus and suggest similar genetic traces of other past diseases may be hidden in archives and libraries worldwide.
