Project description:The extreme environments of the Tibetan Plateau offer significant challenges to human survival, demanding novel adaptations. While the role of biological and agricultural adaptations in enabling early human colonization of the plateau has been widely discussed, the contribution of pastoralism is less well understood, especially the dairy pastoralism that has historically been central to Tibetan diets. Here, we analyze preserved proteins from the dental calculus of 40 ancient individuals to report the earliest direct evidence of dairy consumption on the Tibetan Plateau. Our palaeoproteomic results demonstrate that dairy pastoralism began on the higher plateau by approximately 3,500 years ago, more than 2,000 years earlier than the recording of dairying in historical sources. With less than 1% of the Tibetan Plateau dedicated to farmland, pastoralism and the milking of ruminants were essential for large-scale human expansion into agriculturally-marginal regions that make up the majority of the plateau. Dairy pastoralism allowed conversion of abundant grasslands into nutritional human food, which facilitating adaptation in the face of extreme climatic and altitudinal pressures, and maximizing the land area available for long-term human occupation of the “roof of the world”.
Project description:Higher incidence of chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) is generally considered a precancerous lesion of gastric cancer (GC). Therefore, the early diagnosis and treatment of CAG, especially in Tibetan Plateau areas, play an important role in the prevention of GC. The atrophic and non-atrophic gastric mucosal tissue samples from 7 patients with chronic gastritis (CG) and cancer tissue samples from 3 patients with GC were collected. High-throughput sequencing was performed to identify the differentially expressed in lncRNAs, circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs, followed by the construction of competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) regulatory networks (lncRNA/circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network) in CAG. Those differentially expressed mRNAs with the same expression trend in both CAG and GC were further identified. Two datasets (GSE153224 and GSE163416), involving data in non-Tibetan Plateau areas, were used to further screen out plateau-specific mRNAs in CAG, followed by identification of the plateau-specific and ferroptosis related mRNAs. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis were performed to investigate the biological functions of plateau-specific mRNAs in CAG. This study may provide useful information for identifying potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of CAG.
Project description:Higher incidence of chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) is generally considered a precancerous lesion of gastric cancer (GC). Therefore, the early diagnosis and treatment of CAG, especially in Tibetan Plateau areas, play an important role in the prevention of GC. The atrophic and non-atrophic gastric mucosal tissue samples from 7 patients with chronic gastritis (CG) and cancer tissue samples from 3 patients with GC were collected. High-throughput sequencing was performed to identify the differentially expressed in lncRNAs, circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs, followed by the construction of competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) regulatory networks (lncRNA/circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network) in CAG. Those differentially expressed mRNAs with the same expression trend in both CAG and GC were further identified. Two datasets (GSE153224 and GSE163416), involving data in non-Tibetan Plateau areas, were used to further screen out plateau-specific mRNAs in CAG, followed by identification of the plateau-specific and ferroptosis related mRNAs. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis were performed to investigate the biological functions of plateau-specific mRNAs in CAG. This study may provide useful information for identifying potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of CAG.
Project description:Tibetan's adaptation to high-altitude environment at the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau represents a remarkable case of natural selection during recent human evolution. We generated time series paired RNAseq, ATACseq and Hi-C data in Tibetan and Han Chinese's umbilical endothelial cells from normoxia to hypoxia condition. Our results provide a broad resource of genome-wide hypoxia regulatory network to characterize the effect of genetic variation in high-altitude adaptation, and indicates large-scale maps of variants need proper cell types to understand its act on gene regulation.
Project description:Global warming substantially changes precipitation patterns in the Tibetan plateau, with projection of increased precipitation in southern and northern Tibet but decreased precipitation in the center. Understanding mechanisms of such changes in greenhouse gas emissions is of vital importance in predicting ecosystem feedbacks to climate changes. Nonetheless, it has been hampered by limited knowledge in soil microbial communities, one of the major drivers of greenhouse gas emission. Here, we report a field experiment simulating drying and wetting conditions in the Tibetan grassland. Our field site is located at the Haibei Alpine Grassland Ecosystem Research Station in the northeast of Tibet Plateau, China, and we employed GeoChip 5.0 180K to analyze microbial responses. 18 samples were collected from 3 plots in Haibei Station, with 6 replicates in each plot
Project description:Global warming substantially changes precipitation patterns in the Tibetan plateau, with projection of increased precipitation in southern and northern Tibet but decreased precipitation in the center. Understanding mechanisms of such changes in greenhouse gas emissions is of vital importance in predicting ecosystem feedbacks to climate changes. Nonetheless, it has been hampered by limited knowledge in soil microbial communities, one of the major drivers of greenhouse gas emission. Here, we report a field experiment simulating drying and wetting conditions in the Tibetan grassland. Our field site is located at the Haibei Alpine Grassland Ecosystem Research Station in the northeast of Tibet Plateau, China, and we employed GeoChip 5.0 180K to analyze microbial responses.
Project description:A dentine sample from a previously unknown hominin specimen deriving from the Tibetan Plateau was analyzed using LC-MS/MS in order to characterize its proteome, protein damage characteristics, and phylogenetic affinities to known Late Pleistocene hominin clades (humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans).
Project description:Genetic and limited palaeoanthropological data suggest that Denisovans, a sister group to Neanderthals, were once widely distributed in eastern Eurasia, likely stretching from high-latitude Siberia, to the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, to the low-latitude subtropical regions of southeast Asia. This suggests that Denisovans were capable of adapting to a highly diverse range of environments, but archaeological evidence for this is currently limited. As a result, we know little about their behaviours, including subsistence strategies, across the vast areas they likely occupied. Here, we describe the late Middle to Late Pleistocene faunal assemblage from Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau, where the Xiahe Denisovan mandible and Denisovan sedimentary mtDNA were found, by integrating proteomic screening into traditional zooarchaeological analysis. The results indicate that the faunal assemblage consists of a diverse range of animals, including megafauna, large mammals, small mammals and birds, but is dominated by medium-sized herbivores. Frequent cut marks and percussion traces on bone surfaces throughout the assemblage, even on carnivore bones, indicate that Denisovan activities in Baishiya Karst Cave from at least 190 to 30 thousand years are responsible for the fauna assemblage accumulation. Thorough utilization of acquired animal resources, even perhaps the fur, too, might have helped Denisovans to survive through the last two glacial-interglacial cycles on the cold high-altitude Tibetan Plateau. Our results shed new light on Denisovan behaviours and their adaptations to the diverse and fluctuated environments in the Middle and Late Pleistocene eastern Eurasia.
2024-05-22 | PXD041874 | Pride
Project description:Bacteria succession in freshly deglaciated soils, Tibetan Plateau