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Human archaeological dentin as source of polar and less polar metabolites for untargeted metabolomic research: the case of Yersinia pestis

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Badillo-Sanchez, Diago Armando 
Jones, Donald JL 
Scheib, Christiana L  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-8296

Abstract

Metabolomic approaches, such as in clinical applications of living individuals, have shown potential use for solving questions regarding the past when applied to archaeological material. Here, we study for the first time the potential of this Omic approach as applied to metabolites extracted from archaeological human dentin. Dentin obtained from micro sampling the dental pulp of teeth of victims and non-victims of Yersinia pestis (plague) from a 6th century Cambridgeshire site are used to evaluate the potential use of such unique material for untargeted metabolomic studies on disease state through liquid chromatography hyphenated to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). Results show that small molecules of both likely endogenous and exogenous sources are preserved for a range of polar and less polar/apolar metabolites in archaeological dentin; however, untargeted metabolomic profiles show no clear differentiation between healthy and infected individuals in the small sample analysed (n=20). This study discusses the potential of dentin as a source of small molecules for metabolomic assays and highlights: 1) the need for follow up research to optimise sampling protocols, 2) the requirements of studies with larger sample numbers and 3) the necessity of more databases to amplify the positive results achievable with this Omic technique in the archaeological sciences.

Description

Keywords

LC-HRMS, ancient metabolomics, biomolecular archaeology, disease, human dentin, plague, untargeted metabolomics

Journal Title

Metabolites

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2218-1989
2218-1989

Volume Title

13

Publisher

MDPI AG
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (200368/Z/15/Z)
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research