Project description:The composition of the ancient oral microbiome has recently become possible to investigate by using advanced biomolecular methods such as metagenomics and metaproteomics. This study presents a look at the individuality of the metaproteomes from 22 medieval Danish dental calculus samples. The proteomics data suggest two distinct groups; a healthy and disease-susceptible. Comparison to modern healthy calculus samples supports this hypothesis. The osteological inspections of the samples does not immediately support the grouping made by proteomics data, making us believe that this will add a new and exciting level of information. We identify 3671 protein-groups across all medieval samples and thus expanding the depth of previous studies more than ten times. As a part of future perspective for further depth in these types of samples we performed offline high pH fractionation in combination with TMT labelling and achieved ~30% more protein identifications and reduced costly mass spectrometry time.
Project description:This project applied a dry non-invasive method to detect palaeoproteomic evidence from stained manuscripts. The manuscript analysed in this study is a medieval parchment birth girdle (Wellcome Collection Western MS. 632) made in England and thought to be used by pregnant women while giving birth. Using a dry non-invasive sampling method we were able to extract both human and non-human peptides from the stains, including evidence for the use of honey, cereals, ovicaprine milk and legumes. In addition, a large number of human peptides were detected on the birth roll, many of which are found in cervico-vaginal fluid. This suggests that the birth roll was actively used during childbirth. This study is the first to extract and analyse non-collagenous peptides from a parchment document using a dry non-invasive sampling method and demonstrates the potential of this type of analysis for stained manuscripts, providing direct biomolecular evidence for active use.
