Bringing Stone Age genomic material back to life
Breakthroughs will enable exploration of Earth’s biochemical past, with hopes of discovering new therapeutic molecules
Using ancient tooth tartar, Christina Warinner and her team have successfully reconstructed the genomes of microorganisms up to 100,000 years old.
This breakthrough was made possible only after scientists achieved another first — they successfully reconstructed the genomes of ancient microorganisms up to 100,000 years old, said Christina Warinner, associate professor of anthropology at Harvard and a senior author on the new study. “That’s 90,000 years older than the next nearest reconstructed genome.”
Warinner, who is also a group leader with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, worked with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to achieve this feat. The group’s findings and genome-reconstruction techniques are outlined in a paper published Thursday in Science.
An expert in biomolecular archaeology, Warinner has pioneered the study of ancient tooth tartar, the only part of the human body that fossilizes during life. A form of calcified dental plaque, tartar contains the same minerals as the human skeleton, with similar survival potential for archaeological discovery. “And because it’s on a person’s teeth, we can very clearly associate it with that person and their life,” Warinner said.
