Riems Island, 3 June 2025. How did the devastating epidemics of plague and tuberculosis come about – and what can we learn from them today? Renowned paleogeneticist Prof. Dr. Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will give the 13th Loeffler Lecture at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald, providing exciting insights into his research on the history of historical pathogens.

This research is made possible by state-of-the-art DNA technologies: scientists can now analyse tiny traces of pathogen DNA from human remains – a kind of ‘molecular fossil’. This allows us to trace how bacteria and viruses have evolved, spread and adapted to humans over thousands of years.

Among other things, Krause's research team reconstructed the genetic material of the plague bacterium from medieval bone finds and was able to trace the origins of the disease back to Central Asia. Even older DNA finds from the Stone Age show how the plague adapted to humans and fleas as carriers thousands of years ago – long before it became a devastating pandemic.

In his lecture, Prof. Krause explains how these findings on the emergence and spread of diseases can help us today to better understand the latest and future pandemics and to combat them more effectively.

Prof. Krause has fundamentally changed our knowledge of human evolution and disease in over 250 scientific papers. In his lecture, he will present the latest findings from the field of palaeogenomics – an exciting area of research at the interface of genetics, archaeology and medicine.

The Loeffler Lecture was established in 2012 by the Friedrich Loeffler Institute and the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald to honour achievements in current infectious disease research. It is intended to commemorate the groundbreaking work of Friedrich Loeffler in the field of infectious diseases.

 The event usually takes place around the time of Friedrich Loeffler's birthday in June. Friedrich Loeffler, one of the founders of virus research, was born on 24 June 1852 in Frankfurt/Oder.

 After studying medicine in Würzburg and Berlin, he worked with Robert Koch. In 1888, Loeffler was appointed to the newly established Chair of Hygiene in Greifswald. In 1898, together with Paul Frosch, he described the pathogen that causes foot-and-mouth disease, the first virus to be identified as a filterable and corpuscular infectious agent. On 10 October 1910, he founded the world's first virus research institute on the island of Riems, which is now named after him, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute.

13th Loeffler Lecture 

Professor Dr Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
Title: Ancient pathogen genomes: What we learn about their evolution from historical pathogens / Please note: the lecture will be held in German.

Welcome: Professor Thomas Klinger, Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg
Introduction and moderation: Professor Christa Kühn, Friedrich Loeffler Institute

Date, time: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Location: Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald, Martin-Luther-Straße 14, 17489 Greifswald

Free admission