Dataset Information

Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting.

ABSTRACT: Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called "uterine vellum," has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead for unexpected alternatives, such as rabbit. Here, we report a simple and objective technique using standard conservation treatments to identify the animal origin of parchment. The noninvasive method is a variant on zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting but extracts protein from the parchment surface by using an electrostatic charge generated by gentle rubbing of a PVC eraser on the membrane surface. Using this method, we analyzed 72 pocket Bibles originating in France, England, and Italy and 293 additional parchment samples that bracket this period. We found no evidence for the use of unexpected animals; however, we did identify the use of more than one mammal species in a single manuscript, consistent with the local availability of hides. These results suggest that ultrafine vellum does not necessarily derive from the use of abortive or newborn animals with ultrathin hides, but could equally well reflect a production process that allowed the skins of maturing animals of several species to be rendered into vellum of equal quality and fineness.

SUBMITTER: Fiddyment S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4679014 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting.

Fiddyment Sarah S Holsinger Bruce B Ruzzier Chiara C Devine Alexander A Binois Annelise A Albarella Umberto U Fischer Roman R Nichols Emma E Curtis Antoinette A Cheese Edward E Teasdale Matthew D MD Checkley-Scott Caroline C Milner Stephen J SJ Rudy Kathryn M KM Johnson Eric J EJ Vnouček Jiří J Garrison Mary M McGrory Simon S Bradley Daniel G DG Collins Matthew J MJ

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20151123 49

Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called "uterine vellum," has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead fo ...[more]

PMID: 26598667

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Project description:BackgroundIn recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that characterizing individual brain structure, connectivity and dynamics is essential for understanding brain function in health and disease. However, the majority of neuroimaging and brain stimulation research has characterized human brain function by averaging measurements from groups of subjects and providing population-level inferences. External perturbations applied directly to well-defined brain regions can reveal distinctive information about the state, connectivity and dynamics of the human brain at the individual level.ObjectivesIn a series of studies, we aimed to characterize individual brain responses to MRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and explore the reproducibility of the evoked effects, differences between brain regions, and their individual specificity.MethodsIn the first study, we administered single pulses of TMS to both anatomically (left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex- 'L-DLPFC', left Intra-parietal lobule- 'L-IPL) and functionally (left motor cortex- 'L-M1', right default mode network- 'R-DMN, right dorsal attention network- 'R-DAN') defined cortical nodes in the frontal, motor, and parietal regions across two identical sessions spaced one month apart in 24 healthy volunteers. In the second study, we extended our analyses to two independent data sets (n = 10 in both data sets) having different sham-TMS protocols.ResultsIn the first study, we found that perturbation-induced cortical propagation patterns are heterogeneous across individuals but highly reproducible within individuals, specific to the stimulated region, and distinct from spontaneous activity. Most importantly, we demonstrate that by assessing the spatiotemporal characteristics of TMS-induced brain responses originating from different cortical regions, individual subjects can be identified with perfect accuracy. In the second study, we demonstrated that subject specificity of TEPs is generalizable across independent data sets and distinct from non-transcranial neural responses evoked by sham-TMS protocols.ConclusionsPerturbation-induced brain responses reveal unique "brain fingerprints" that reflect causal connectivity dynamics of the stimulated brain regions, and may serve as reliable biomarkers of individual brain function.

Dataset Information

Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting.

Publications

Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting.

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