Malaria is a disease caused by protozoans of the genus Plasmodium, which are transmitted across humans and other vertebrate hosts through the bite of infected female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Given the considerable global health challenge it poses, efforts to better understand the disease, its emergence and worldwide spread have been ongoing. Now, a study in Nature reports the retrieval of high-coverage mitochondrial genomes and genome-wide nuclear data from ancient malaria parasites and charts the history of malaria in the Americas.

Genomic data sharing and the collaborative input of a large, interdisciplinary team of geneticists and archaeologists, among other scholars, were critical to the success of the study. Taking advantage of previously obtained ancient DNA sequences, the authors computationally searched these existing data sets for evidence of Plasmodium preservation in ancient individuals. In total, 36 individuals — spanning 26 archaeological sites across 16 countries and 5,500 years of human history, from the Neolithic era to the modern era — were found to be infected or co-infected with Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax and/or Plasmodium malariae.