Ten millennia of hepatitis B virus evolution
Arthur Kocher, Luka Papac, Rodrigo Barquera, Felix M. Key, Maria A. Spyrou, Ron Hübler, Adam B. Rohrlach, Franziska Aron, Raphaela Stahl, Antje Wissgott, Florian van Bömmel, Maria Pfefferkorn, Alissa Mittnik, Vanessa Villalba‐Mouco, Gunnar U. Neumann, Maïté Rivollat, Marieke S. van de Loosdrecht, Kerttu Majander, Rezeda I. Tukhbatova, Lyazzat Musralina, Ayshin Ghalichi, Sandra Penske, Susanna Sabin, Megan Michel, Joscha Gretzinger, Elizabeth A. Nelson, Tiago Ferraz, Kathrin Nägele, Cody Parker, Marcel Keller, Evelyn K. Guevara, Michal Feldman, Stefanie Eisenmann, Eirini Skourtanioti, Karen Giffin, Guido Alberto Gnecchi‐Ruscone, Susanne Friederich, Vittoria Schimmenti, Valery Khartanovich, Marina K. Karapetian, Mikhail S. Chaplygin, Vladimir V. Kufterin, Aleksandr Khokhlov, Andrey A. Chizhevsky, Dmitry A. Stashenkov, Anna F. Kochkina, Cristina Tejedor Rodríguez, Íñigo García-Martínez de Lagrán, Héctor Arcusa-Magallón, Rafael Garrido Peña, José I. Royo-Guillén, Jan Nováček, Stéphane Rottier, Sacha Kacki, Sylvie Saintot, Elena Kaverzneva, Andrej B. Belinskiy, Petr Velemínský, Petr Limburský, Michal Kostka, Louise Loe, Elizabeth Popescu, Rachel Clarke, Alice Lyons, Richard Mortimer, Antti Sajantila, Yadira Chinique de Armas, Silvia Teresita Hernández Godoy, Diana I. Hernández-Zaragoza, Jessica Pearson, Didier Binder, Philippe Lefranc, Anatoly R. Kantorovich, Vladimir Е. Maslov, Luca Lai, Magdalena Żołędziewska, Jessica F. Beckett, Michaela Langová, Alžběta Danielisová, Tara Ingman, Gabriel García Atiénzar, María Paz de Miguel Ibáñez, Alejandro Romero, Alessandra Sperduti, Sophie Beckett, Susannah J. Salter, Emma D. Zilivinskaya, Dmitry V. Vasil’ev, Kristin von Heyking, Richard L. Burger, Lucy C. Salazar, Luc Amkreutz, Masnav Navruzbekov, Eva Rosenstock, Carmen Alonso Fernández, Vladimir Slavchev, Alexey Kalmykov, Biaslan Ch. Atabiev, Elena Batieva, Micaela Álvarez Calmet
Abstract
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with the virus present in European and South American hunter-gatherers during the early Holocene. After the European Neolithic transition, Mesolithic HBV strains were replaced by a lineage likely disseminated by early farmers that prevailed throughout western Eurasia for ~4000 years, declining around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The only remnant of this prehistoric HBV diversity is the rare genotype G, which appears to have reemerged during the HIV pandemic.