Project description:Reconstruction of ancient epigenomes by DNA methylation (DNAm) can shed light into the composition of cell types, disease states, and age at death. However, such analysis is hampered by impaired DNA quality and little is known how decomposition affects DNAm. In this study, we determined if EPIC Illumina BeadChip technology is applicable for specimen from mummies of the 18th century CE. Overall, the signal intensity on the microarray was extremely low, but for one of two samples we detected characteristic DNAm signals in a subset of CG dinucleotides (CpGs), which were selected with a stringent processing pipeline. Using only these CpGs we could train epigenetic signatures with reference DNAm profiles of multiple tissues and our predictions were in line with the fact that the specimen was lung tissue of a female 28-year-old donor. Thus, we provide proof of principle that Illumina BeadChips are applicable for DNAm profiling in ancient samples.
Project description:For many decades Indigenous people, including Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, have fought for their return of their ancient people. By sequencing ten ancient nuclear genomes of Aboriginal Australians and 27 mitogenomes from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians (up to 1,540 yr BP) of known provenance we demonstrate the feasibility of successfully identifying the geographic origins of unprovenanced ancestral remains using genomic methods.
Project description:Bone protein extractions for stable isotope analysis from 18th and 19th century humans from North America were analyzed for their protein content. Samples were classified by their stable isotope quality and changes between them were evaluated.
