Kirsten Bos facts for kids

Kirsten Bos is a Canadian scientist who studies ancient diseases. She is a physical anthropologist. This means she studies humans and their past using bones and other physical evidence.

Kirsten Bos leads a special research group. It's called Molecular Palaeopathology. This group is part of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Her main work involves looking at very old DNA to learn about how infectious diseases spread in the past.

Learning and Studying

Kirsten Bos started her university journey in 2001. She earned a degree in Bio-Medical Science from the University of Guelph. The next year, she studied Anthropology at the University of Manitoba.

She continued her studies at McMaster University. There, she earned her master's degree in Anthropology in 2004. She then completed her PhD in 2012. Her PhD research was all about the Genetic investigations into the Black Death.

After finishing her PhD, Dr. Bos worked as a postdoctoral researcher. This was at the University of Tübingen from 2012 to 2015.

Amazing Discoveries

Dr. Bos's research focuses on understanding diseases from long ago. She uses ancient DNA to find out how these illnesses affected people.

Solving the Mystery of the Plague

Kirsten Bos started researching the plague at McMaster University. She worked with the Ancient DNA Centre there. She and Verena Schuenemann from the University of Tübingen led a big project.

They wanted to find the DNA of the Black Death pathogen. A pathogen is a tiny germ that causes disease. The Black Death was a terrible sickness. It killed millions of people in the 1300s.

They found samples from plague victims buried in a medieval London cemetery. The Museum of London Archaeology helped dig up the site.

The research team looked at samples from 46 teeth and 53 bones. They found that a specific germ, called Yersinia pestis, caused the Black Death. This disease killed over 30 million people in 14th century Europe.

They also learned something amazing. The ancient germ that caused the Black Death is very similar to the plague germs we see today. It hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages. Their findings were shared in a science journal called Nature in 2011.

Uncovering Ancient Tuberculosis

Dr. Bos also led a study on ancient tuberculosis (TB). TB is a serious lung disease. Her team found that an old type of TB came to the New World (the Americas). It traveled there through infected sea lions and seals.

The research team from the University of Tübingen looked at thousands of old skeletons for signs of TB. They found TB DNA in three skeletons. These skeletons were found in southern Peru.

Scientists figured out that these remains were buried 1,000 years ago. This was before Europeans arrived in the Americas. They also saw that this ancient TB was different from the TB germs we know today.

The study results were published in Nature in 2014. They suggested a new type of TB came to South America. This type was different from other TB strains around 1,000 years ago.

Researchers found that the ancient Peruvian TB was almost the same as TB found in pinnipeds. Pinnipeds are a group of sea animals. They include seals, sea lions, and walruses.

The study suggests that TB first appeared in Africa about 6,000 years ago. Then, the TB germ moved from land animals to a sea lion or seal. This sea animal then traveled across the ocean to South America. Later, these sea animals likely infected people living along the coast of Peru and northern Chile.