Response to Brinkmann et al. "Re-assembly of 19th century smallpox vaccine genomes reveals the contemporaneous use of horsepox and horsepox-related viruses in the United States"
Genome Biol. 2020 Dec 4;21(1):287.
doi: 10.1186/s13059-020-02203-z.
1 McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L9, Canada. duggana@mcmaster.ca.
2 Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
3 McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L9, Canada.
4 M.G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L9, Canada.
We thank Brinkmann and colleagues for their correspondence and their further investigation into these American Civil War Era vaccination strains. Here, we summarize the difficulties and caveats of work with ancient DNA.