Herpes virus genome traces the ancient path of human migration

Cosmic Log

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

Oct. 21, 2013 at 10:16 PM ET

Kolb et al. / PLOS ONE

A world map charts the classification of herpes simplex virus type-1 genomes into different genetic groups, or clades. Patterns of land migration are shown by yellow lines, and potential air/sea migration by a pink line.

To confirm the theory that humans spread out from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, all you have to do is follow the cold sores. Or, to be more precise, follow the mutation patterns encoded in the genome of the virus that causes those cold sores.

That's what researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison did: In the journal PLOS ONE, they describe how they sequenced the genomes of 31 samples of herpes simplex virus type-1 to reconstruct how it hitchhiked on humans as they dispersed around the world.

The results match the pattern proposed by the "Out of Africa" theory, which has become the most widely accepted scenario for ancient human migration. The analysis showed that African strains of the virus contained the most genetic diversity suggesting that they had the oldest roots.

The viral strains sort exactly as you would predict based on sequencing of human genomes. We found that all of the African isolates cluster together, all the virus from the Far East, Korea, Japan, China clustered together, all the viruses in Europe and America, with one exception, clustered together, senior author Curtis Brandt, a professor of medical microbiology and opthalmology, said in a UW-Madison news release.

What we found follows exactly what the anthropologists have told us, and the molecular geneticists who have analyzed the human genome have told us, about where humans originated and how they spread across the planet, he said.

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Herpes virus genome traces the ancient path of human migration