Genetics and Genomics Commons^™

Differential Preservation Of Endogenous Human And Microbial Dna In Dental Calculus And Dentin, Allison E. Mann, Susanna Sabin, Kirsten Ziesemer, Ashild J. Vagene, Hannes Schroeder, Andrew T. Ozga, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, Courtney A. Hofman, James A. Fellows Yates, Domingo C. Salazar-Garcia, Bruno Frohlich, Mark Aldenderfer, Menno Hoogland, Christopher Read, George R. Milner, Anne C. Stone, Cecil M. Lewis Jr., Johannes Krause, Corinne Hofman, Kirsten I. Bos, Christina Warinner

Biology Faculty Articles

Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient biomolecules. Recently, it has been proposed that dental calculus may provide a more robust environment for DNA preservation than other skeletal remains, but this has not been systematically tested. In this study, shotgun-sequenced data from paired dental calculus and dentin samples from 48 globally distributed individuals are compared using a metagenomic approach. Overall, we find DNA from dental calculus is consistently more abundant and less contaminated than DNA from dentin. The majority of DNA in dental calculus is …

Successful Enrichment And Recovery Of Whole Mitochondrial Genomes From Ancient Human Dental Calculus, Andrew T. Ozga, Maria A. Nieves-Colon, Tanvi P. Honap, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, Courtney A. Hofman, George R. Milner, Cecil M. Lewis Jr., Anne C. Stone, Christina Warinner

Biology Faculty Articles

Objectives

Archaeological dental calculus is a rich source of host‐associated biomolecules. Importantly, however, dental calculus is more accurately described as a calcified microbial biofilm than a host tissue. As such, concerns regarding destructive analysis of human remains may not apply as strongly to dental calculus, opening the possibility of obtaining human health and ancestry information from dental calculus in cases where destructive analysis of conventional skeletal remains is not permitted. Here we investigate the preservation of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in archaeological dental calculus and its potential for full mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) reconstruction in maternal lineage ancestry analysis.

Materials and …

Origins Of An Unmarked Georgia Cemetery Using Ancient Dna Analysis, Andrew T. Ozga, Raul Y. Tito, Brian M. Kemp, Hugh Matternes, Alexandra J. Obregon-Tito, Leslie Neal, Cecil M. Lewis Jr.

Biology Faculty Articles

Determining the origins of those buried within undocumented cemeteries is of incredible importance to historical archaeologists and, in many cases, the nearby communities. In the case of Avondale Burial Place, a cemetery in Bibb County, Georgia, in use from 1820 to 1950, all written documentation of those interred within it has been lost. Osteological and archaeological evidence alone could not describe, with confidence, the ancestral origins of the 101 individuals buried there. In the present study, we used ancient DNA extraction methods in well-preserved skeletal fragments from 20 individuals buried in Avondale Burial Place to investigate the origins of the …