Abstract
History is filled with examples of novel infectious diseases suddenly appearing, and the origin of many of these is controversial, as in the case of the sudden emergence of syphilis in Europe in 1496 (Quetel, 1990). Biologists and historians studying these diseases usually pay little attention to the possibility that the infectious agent may have arisen de novo, preferring (often correctly, it should be said) to look for explanations in terms of transfer of pathogens between species or from other host populations. In a paper published in the latest Nature Genetics, however, Friesen et al (2006) give us evidence of a new disease emerging not because of interspecies or interpopulation transfer of pathogens but because of the interspecific transfer of a toxin gene that changed a previously benign microorganism into an important pathogen.
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