Just a drive-by post. According to
Science Daily:
Detecting diseases in ancient remains is often fraught with difficulty,
especially because of contamination. Techniques based on microbe DNA can
easily be confused by environmental contamination, and they can only
confirm that the pathogen was present, not that the person was infected,
but the researchers behind the study, led by Angelique Corthals of the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, found
a way around this problem. They used proteomics, focusing on protein
rather than DNA remains, to profile immune system response from degraded
samples taken from 500 year-old mummies.
The team swabbed the lips of two Andean Inca mummies, buried at
22,000-feet elevation and originally discovered in 1999, and compared
the proteins they found to large databases of the human genome. They
found that the protein profile from the mummy of a 15-year old girl,
called "The Maiden," was similar to that of chronic respiratory
infection patients, and the analysis of the DNA showed the presence of
probably pathogenic bacteria in the genus Mycobacterium, responsible for
upper respiratory tract infections and tuberculosis. In addition,
X-rays of the lungs of the Maiden showed signs of lung infection at the
time of death. Proteomics, DNA, and x-rays from another mummy found
together with the Maiden did not show signs of respiratory infection.
The full report can be read
here.
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