ABSTRACT: Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK
Project description:Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK.
Project description:There are longstanding questions about the origins and ancestry of the Picts of early medieval Scotland (ca. 300-900 CE), prompted in part by exotic medieval origin myths, their enigmatic symbols and inscriptions, and the meagre textual evidence. The Picts, first mentioned in the late 3rd century CE resisted the Romans and went on to form a powerful kingdom that ruled over a large territory in northern Britain. In the 9th and 10th centuries Gaelic language, culture and identity became dominant, transforming the Pictish realm into Alba, the precursor to the medieval kingdom of Scotland. To date, no comprehensive analysis of Pictish genomes has been published, and questions about their biological relationships to other cultural groups living in Britain remain unanswered. Here we present two high-quality Pictish genomes (2.4 and 16.5X coverage) from central and northern Scotland dated from the 5th-7th century which we impute and co-analyse with >8,300 previously published ancient and modern genomes. Using allele frequency and haplotype-based approaches, we can firmly place the genomes within the Iron Age gene pool in Britain and demonstrate regional biological affinity. We also demonstrate the presence of population structure within Pictish groups, with Orcadian Picts being genetically distinct from their mainland contemporaries. When investigating Identity-By-Descent (IBD) with present-day genomes, we observe broad affinities between the mainland Pictish genomes and the present-day people living in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria, but less with the rest of England, the Orkney islands and eastern Scotland - where the political centres of Pictland were located. The pre-Viking Age Orcadian Picts evidence a high degree of IBD sharing across modern Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Orkney islands, demonstrating substantial genetic continuity in Orkney for the last ~2,000 years. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA diversity at the Pictish cemetery of Lundin Links (n = 7) reveals absence of direct common female ancestors, with implications for broader social organisation. Overall, our study provides novel insights into the genetic affinities and population structure of the Picts and direct relationships between ancient and present-day groups of the UK.
2023-03-27 | PRJEB60907 | EVA
Project description:Emergence, Continuity and Evolution of Yersinia pestis throughout Medieval and early modern Denmark
Project description:Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars - a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim ethno-religious minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni- and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China.
Project description:Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars - a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim ethno-religious minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni- and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China. 6 samples were analysed with the Illumina platform HumanOmniExpress-24 v1.0 BeadChip and are described herein. Please note that the submitted information does not compromise participant privacy and is in accord with the original consent in addition to all applicable laws, regulations, and institutional policies. The submitter verified that there are no privacy concerns and that our human data can be open access.
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:Immune activation in people living with HIV on anti-retroviral therapy is associated with increased risk of morbidity and mortality, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. To identify whether perturbation of immunological pathways persist at systems level, we compared genome-wide whole blood transcriptomes from 26 people living with HIV on long-term anti-retroviral therapy with 12 HIV-negative healthy controls. All participants were Caucasian male adults recruited from London, UK. People living with HIV were on anti-retroviral therapy for a median of 8.5 years (interquartile range 3-16 years). They had undetectable plasma HIV viral load (<40 copies/ml) and median circulating CD4 counts of 703 cells/µl (interquartile range 491-841 cells/µl).