Ancient biomolecules
- Submission status
- Closed
- Submission deadline
Given the right conditions, nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids can survive for thousands or even millions of years. These ancient biomolecules are found in human and animal remains, including both soft tissue and mineralized or keratinous material like bones, teeth, hair, claws, feathers, and shells; in fossilized plant, fungal, and animal material; on stone and ceramic archaeological artefacts; and in environmental substrates like sediments, ice cores, and permafrost. Proteins recovered from mineralized dental plaque and coprolites shed light on the ancient oral and gut microbiome, while DNA from microbial pathogens reveals the ancient burden and spread of infectious diseases. The structure of ancient lipids in ocean sediments provide insight into past temperature conditions. Phylogenetic histories, species expansions and extinctions, and modern human evolution and migration can all be reconstructed with the help of these molecules.
This Collection will showcase research in paleogenomics, -proteomics, and -lipidomics, as applied to evolutionary biology, archaeology, environmental science, and other fields.
Editors
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Emanuela Cristiani
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
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Dong Hoon Shin
Seoul National University, South Korea
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Chuan-Chao Wang
Xiamen University, China
Emanuela Cristiani is an Associate Professor in Prehistoric Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she is also the director of the DANTE - Diet and Ancient Technology laboratory. She is an archaeologist interested in cultural traditions, ancient dietary strategies and technology of ancient hunter-gatherer societies of southern Europe. Emanuela Cristiani is specialized in use-wear traces and residue analysis of ancient material culture and human dental calculus. Dr Cristiani has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2019.
Dong Hoon Shin is a Biological Anthropologist at Seoul National University. His research interest has been focused on pre-modern people’s health and disease status. Using research tools ranging from anatomical to various biochemical analyses, he has worked to reveal the changing patterns of physical or pathological traits of our ancestors throughout history. His topics of study include the paleopathological work on ancient bones and research of viral, bacterial, or helminthic pathogens in archaeological human specimens. Professor Shin has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2015.
Chuan-Chao Wang is a geneticist currently working as a Professor and Director at the Institute of Anthropology, Xiamen University. He earned his Ph.D. from Fudan University in 2015 and received his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. His work primarily focuses on using an ancient DNA approach to study the genetic structure, admixture, origin, and dispersal of human populations. Professor Wang has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2017.
