Project description:Linguistic and cultural evidence suggests that Madagascar was the final point of two major dispersals of Austronesian and Bantu speaking populations. Today, Mikea are described as the last known Malagasy population reported to be still practising a hunter-gatherer life-style. It is unclear, however, whether Mikea descend from a remnant population that existed before the arrival of Austronesian and Bantu agriculturalists or whether it is only their life-style that separates them from the other contemporary populations of South Madagascar. In order to address these questions we have performed a genome wide analysis of >700,000 SNP markers on 21 Mikea, 24 Vezo and 24 Temoro individuals together with 50 individuals from Bajo and Lebbo populations from Indonesia. Our analyses of these data in the context of data available from other Southeast Asian and African populations reveal that all three Malagasy populations are derived from the same admixture event involving Austronesian and Bantu sources. In contrast to the fact that most of the vocabulary of the Malagasy speakers is derived from the Barito group of the Austronesian language family we observe that only one third of their genetic ancestry is related to the populations of Java-Kalimantan-Sulawesi area. Because no additional ancestry components distinctive to for the Mikea were found, it is likely that they have adopted their hunter-gatherer way of life by through cultural reversion.
Project description:Metaproteomic analysis of King Ghezo's tomb wall in Abomey (Benin), capital of the ancient kingdom of Dahomey. Without any a priori metaproteomics interpretation allowed identification of the proteins and their taxonomical origins, and thus archaeological reconstruction of voodoo rituals of consecration and maintenance of vitality.
Project description:Complementary bottom-up MS/MS analyses contributed to complete a locus-resolved venom phenotype map for O. hannah, the world's longest venomous snake and a species of medical concern across its wide distribution range in forests from India through Southeast Asia. Its venom composition convincingly explains the main neurotoxic effects of human envenoming caused by king cobra bite. The integration of efficient chromatographic separation of the venom components, and locus-resolved toxin identification through top-down and bottom-up MS/MS-based species-specific database searching, promises a bright future to the field of venom research.
Project description:Linguistic and cultural evidence suggests that Madagascar was the final point of two major dispersals of Austronesian and Bantu speaking populations. Today, Mikea are described as the last known Malagasy population reported to be still practising a hunter-gatherer life-style. It is unclear, however, whether Mikea descend from a remnant population that existed before the arrival of Austronesian and Bantu agriculturalists or whether it is only their life-style that separates them from the other contemporary populations of South Madagascar. In order to address these questions we have performed a genome wide analysis of >700,000 SNP markers on 21 Mikea, 24 Vezo and 24 Temoro individuals together with 50 individuals from Bajo and Lebbo populations from Indonesia. Our analyses of these data in the context of data available from other Southeast Asian and African populations reveal that all three Malagasy populations are derived from the same admixture event involving Austronesian and Bantu sources. In contrast to the fact that most of the vocabulary of the Malagasy speakers is derived from the Barito group of the Austronesian language family we observe that only one third of their genetic ancestry is related to the populations of Java-Kalimantan-Sulawesi area. Because no additional ancestry components distinctive to for the Mikea were found, it is likely that they have adopted their hunter-gatherer way of life by through cultural reversion. 69 samples were analysed with the Illumina platform OmniExpress BeadChips and are described herein.