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Science 23 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5913, pp. 527 - 530
DOI: 10.1126/science.1166083
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Reports

The Peopling of the Pacific from a Bacterial Perspective

Yoshan Moodley,1*{dagger} Bodo Linz,1*{ddagger} Yoshio Yamaoka,2* Helen M. Windsor,3 Sebastien Breurec,4,5 Jeng-Yih Wu,6 Ayas Maady,7 Steffie Bernhöft,1 Jean-Michel Thiberge,8 Suparat Phuanukoonnon,9 Gangolf Jobb,10 Peter Siba,9 David Y. Graham,2 Barry J. Marshall,3 Mark Achtman1,11§

Two prehistoric migrations peopled the Pacific. One reached New Guinea and Australia, and a second, more recent, migration extended through Melanesia and from there to the Polynesian islands. These migrations were accompanied by two distinct populations of the specific human pathogen Helicobacter pylori, called hpSahul and hspMaori, respectively. hpSahul split from Asian populations of H. pylori 31,000 to 37,000 years ago, in concordance with archaeological history. The hpSahul populations in New Guinea and Australia have diverged sufficiently to indicate that they have remained isolated for the past 23,000 to 32,000 years. The second human expansion from Taiwan 5000 years ago dispersed one of several subgroups of the Austronesian language family along with one of several hspMaori clades into Melanesia and Polynesia, where both language and parasite have continued to diverge.

1 Max-Planck-Institut für Infektionsbiologie, Department of Molecular Biology, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
2 Department of Medicine-Gastroenterology, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
3 Microbiology and Immunology M502, School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences, University of Western Australia, Australia 6009.
4 Institut Pasteur, BP 220, Dakar, Sénégal.
5 Institut Pasteur de Nouvelle-Calédonie, BP61, 98845 Noumea, New Caledonia.
6 Department of Gastroenterology, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100 Shih-Chuan 1st Road, Kaohsiung 80708, Taiwan.
7 Department of Endoscopy, Republic Hospital No. 1, Kyzyl City 667003, Republic of Tuva, Russia.
8 Institut Pasteur, Genotyping of Pathogens and Public Health, 28 rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris, France.
9 Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, Post Office Box 60, Goroka, EHP, 441 Papua New Guinea.
10 Fritz-Kortner-Bogen 36, 81739 Munich, Germany.
11 Environmental Research Institute and Department of Microbiology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology, Savoyenstrasse 1A, A-1160, Vienna, Austria.

{ddagger} Present address: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.

§ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: m.achtman{at}ucc.ie

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