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Detecting Bacterial Species From Ancient Human Skeletal Samples, Ariel Owens, Daisy Mcgrath, Tsai-Tien Tseng

Symposium of Student Scholars

Diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) via morphological analysis is difficult and often inconsistent. With next-generation sequencing (NGS), ancient host microbiomes can be subjected to metagenomic analyses for the detection of TB in silico. Suitable bioinformatic workflows are needed for reliable ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of causative agents. This study aims to enhance available bioinformatic screening methods to create more suitable bioinformatic processes and generate insights in relation to TB.

This research utilizes publicly available NGS data accessed through the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Initial quality control steps included adapter trimming with Trim …