Project description:Metagenomic Screening of ancient DNA from a Late Medieval mass burial site in Lübeck, Northern Germany, revealed occurence of S. Paratyphi C.
Project description:Medieval Europe was repeatedly affected by outbreaks of infectious diseases, some of which reached epidemic proportions. A Late Medieval mass burial next to the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital in Lübeck (present-day Germany) contained the skeletal remains of more than 800 individuals who had presumably died from infectious disease. From 92 individuals, we screened the ancient DNA extracts for the presence of pathogens to determine the cause of death. Metagenomic analysis revealed evidence of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Paratyphi C, suggesting an outbreak of enteric paratyphoid fever. Three reconstructed S. Paratyphi C genomes showed close similarity to a strain from Norway (1200 CE). Radiocarbon dates placed the disease outbreak in Lübeck between 1270 and 1400 cal CE, with historical records indicating 1367 CE as the most probable year. The deceased were of northern and eastern European descent, confirming Lübeck as an important trading center of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic region.
Project description:The composition of the ancient oral microbiome has recently become possible to investigate by using advanced biomolecular methods such as metagenomics and metaproteomics. This study presents a look at the individuality of the metaproteomes from 22 medieval Danish dental calculus samples. The proteomics data suggest two distinct groups; a healthy and disease-susceptible. Comparison to modern healthy calculus samples supports this hypothesis. The osteological inspections of the samples does not immediately support the grouping made by proteomics data, making us believe that this will add a new and exciting level of information. We identify 3671 protein-groups across all medieval samples and thus expanding the depth of previous studies more than ten times. As a part of future perspective for further depth in these types of samples we performed offline high pH fractionation in combination with TMT labelling and achieved ~30% more protein identifications and reduced costly mass spectrometry time.
Project description:The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.
