Metagenomic analysis of dental calculus in ancient Egyptian baboons.

ABSTRACT: Dental calculus, or mineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues. Recently, ancient metagenomics made it possible to unlock the wealth of microbial and dietary information of dental calculus to reconstruct oral microbiomes and lifestyle of humans from the past. Although most studies have so far focused on ancient humans, dental calculus is known to form in a wide range of animals, potentially informing on how human-animal interactions changed the animals' oral ecology. Here, we characterise the oral microbiome of six ancient Egyptian baboons held in captivity during the late Pharaonic era (9^th-6^th centuries BC) and of two historical baboons from a zoo via shotgun metagenomics. We demonstrate that these captive baboons possessed a d

SUBMITTER: Ottoni C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6927955 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature