PALAEO-ENEO · Genomic and proteomic analysis of Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age humans from Central-Southern Italy
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-11-01 → 2019-10-31
- EU contribution
- €200,195
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Genomic and proteomic analysis of Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age humans from Central-Southern Italy
To date, very fragmentary is the reconstruction of genomic profiles of ancient southern Europeans populations, due to their more challenging preservation. At the same time, which taxonomic groups, in the human oral microbiome, have been lost or gained with the introduction of agricolture is still no clear. Accordingly, PALAEO-ENEO aimed at reconstruction of the human genomic profiles and at characterization of the oral microbiome of pre- and post-Neolithic anatomically modern humans from Central-Southern Italy, using genome-wide profiling and mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis of skeletal remains and mineralised dental plaque (archaeological dental calculus). In particular all the research objectives of the project aimed to provide a more comprehensive knowledge about the Neolithic transition in Central-Southern Italy and they can be summarised as follow: 1. define the ancestral pre-Neolithic population in the Central-Southern Italy; 2. profile the Neolithic and post-Neolithic population in the same area; 3. test whether, and in which measure, there was an admixture between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers locally; 4. Metagenomic reconstruction of pre- and post-Neolithic oral microbiomes; 5. Metaproteomics reconstruction of pathophysiologic interactions between pre- and post-Neolithic oral microbiomes and their hosts, and diet reconstruction at a taxonomic resolution by proteomic approach.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project aims at reconstructing the ancestry and oral disease of Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age anatomically modern humans from Central-Southern Italy, using genome-wide profiling and mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis of skeletal remains and mineralised dental plaque (archaeological dental calculus). In Europe, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural communities (Neolithisation) and the Bronze Age migration into Central Europe from the Asian steppe were the most important demographic events since the initial peopling by anatomically modern humans. However, until now, no Palaeolithic and only a few of Neolithic and Bronze age individuals from South Europe have been characterised for genomic analysis. As a consequence, the genetic base of outstanding peopling and migratory processes in prehistoric Europe, such as: (a) the East-West population structure among European hunter-gatherers, and (b) the Neolithic Southern European horizon known as the Cardial culture, still need to be fully understood. Similarly, metagenomic analysis of Palaeolithic and Neolithic dental calculus has been limited to preliminary screening of a limited number of samples, with no associated metaproteomic analysis. What taxonomic groups and metabolic functions were lost or gained with Neolithisation? How this affected oral heath? The genomic characterisation of Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age humans from Southern Europe will be integrated with a metagenomic and metaproteomic analysis of dental calculus to produce the richest possible personal “-omics” profiling so far achievable for ancient humans. The two main research objectives are: 1. Integrate Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age human genomic data from Central-Southern Italy within the genomic landscape available for all ancient and present-day West Eurasians, and 2. Reconstruct the oral microbiome, and its metabolic interactions with the host, before and after Neolithisation.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNCoordinatorDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union