Exploring the potential of dental calculus to shed light on past human migrations in Oceania
Date
2024
Authors
Velsko, I.M.
Fagernäs, Z.
Tromp, M.
Bedford, S.
Buckley, H.R.
Clark, G.
Dudgeon, J.
Flexner, J.
Galipaud, J.C.
Kinaston, R.
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Journal article
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Nature Communications, 2024; 15(1):10191-1-10191-17
Statement of Responsibility
Irina M. Velsko, Zandra Fagernäs, Monica Tromp, Stuart Bedford, Hallie R. Buckley, Geoffrey Clark, John Dudgeon, James Flexner, Jean-Christophe Galipaud, Rebecca Kinaston, Cecil M. Lewis Jr, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Kathrin Nägele, Andrew T. Ozga, Cosimo Posth, Adam B. Rohrlach, Richard Shing, Truman Simanjuntak, Matthew Spriggs, Anatauarii Tamarii, Frédérique Valentin, Edson Willie, Christina Warinner
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Abstract
The Pacific islands and Island Southeast Asia have experienced multiple waves of human migrations, providing a case study for exploring the potential of ancient microbiomes to study human migration. We perform a metagenomic study of archaeological dental calculus from 102 individuals, originating from 10 Pacific islands and 1 island in Island Southeast Asia spanning ~3000 years. Oral microbiome DNA preservation in calculus is far higher than that of human DNA in archaeological bone, and comparable to that of calculus from temperate regions. Oral microbial community composition is minimally driven by time period and geography in Pacific and Island Southeast Asia calculus, but is found to be distinctive compared to calculus from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Phylogenies of individual bacterial species in Pacific and Island Southeast Asia calculus reflect geography. Archaeological dental calculus shows good preservation in tropical regions and the potential to yield information about past human migrations, complementing studies of the human genome.
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© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.