0000000000246630
AUTHOR
Bernd Herrmann
Palaeogenetics and cultural heritage. Species determination and STR-genotyping from ancient DNA in art and artefacts
Abstract In recent years, a few papers have addressed the palaeogenetic analysis of cultural, historical and archaeological artefacts. We provide an overview of the individual published articles and then describe the results we had in the framework of a palaeogenetic research project involving various historical and prehistoric finds from museums, archaeological excavations, and libraries. We show that ancient DNA can be isolated from most of the various biomaterials (leather, parchment, glue, binding media, crusted organic plant remains in containers). Short pieces of degraded DNA are used, on the one hand, to determine the organic remnant’s genus/species of origin, and on the other hand, …
The selective advantage of cystic fibrosis heterozygotes tested by aDNA analysis: A preliminary investigation
Recently a heterozygote advantage was suggested to explain the high incidence (1:25 carrier individuals in Europeans) of the cystic fibrosis gene. This selective advantage was speculated to be due to a high resistance to chloride-secreting diarrhea, including cholera. Up to now the major efforts to test directly this hypothesis have been limited to animal models.