A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch
Autor
Niemann, Jonas
Vågene, Åshild J.
Allentoft, Morten E.
Lanigan, Liam T.
Taurozzi, Alberto J.
Nielsen, Sofie Holtsmark
Dee, Michael W.
Christensen, Mads C.
Sørensen, Søren A.
Collins, Matthew J.
Datum
2019-12-17Journal Title
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Volume
10
Issue
1
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Zobrazit celý záznamCitation
Jensen, T. Z. T., Niemann, J., Iversen, K. H., Fotakis, A. K., Gopalakrishnan, S., Vågene, Å. J., Pedersen, M. W., et al. (2019). A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch. Nature Communications, 10 (1)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13549-9
Abstrakt
Abstract: The rise of ancient genomics has revolutionised our understanding of human prehistory but this work depends on the availability of suitable samples. Here we present a complete ancient human genome and oral microbiome sequenced from a 5700 year-old piece of chewed birch pitch from Denmark. We sequence the human genome to an average depth of 2.3× and find that the individual who chewed the pitch was female and that she was genetically more closely related to western hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe than hunter-gatherers from central Scandinavia. We also find that she likely had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes. In addition, we identify DNA fragments from several bacterial and viral taxa, including Epstein-Barr virus, as well as animal and plant DNA, which may have derived from a recent meal. The results highlight the potential of chewed birch pitch as a source of ancient DNA.
Keywords
Article, /631/208/212/2142, /631/208/457, /631/208/514/1948, /706/689/19/27, /45/23, article
Sponsorship
Villum Fonden (Villum Foundation) (22917)
EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020) (649307, 676154)
Identifiers
s41467-019-13549-9, 13549
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13549-9
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/315423
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/