Publications by authors named "C Theves"
Article Synopsis
- * Researchers discovered that most ancient DNA is released within 60 minutes at 37°C, suggesting a quick pre-digestion process is beneficial.
- * This method, combined with DNA capture techniques, enabled the analysis of 12 ancient bacteria from France related to pandemics in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The 17 century plague epidemic had a particularly strong demographic toll in Southern Europe, especially Italy, where it caused long-lasting economical damage. Whether this resulted from ineffective sanitation measures or more pathogenic strains remains unknown. DNA screening of 26 skeletons from the 1629-1630 plague cemetery of Lariey (French Alps) identified two teeth rich in plague genetic material.
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- The transition from the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age in western Europe involved significant changes in populations and societies, primarily due to the genomic contributions of pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppes.
- This process was marked by the interaction between declining hunter-gatherers and expanding farmers, leading to diverse genetic backgrounds in populations across regions, particularly noted through ancient genomic data from Britain, Ireland, and Germany, though less so in France.
- In a study focusing on ancient genomes from France, researchers found considerable genetic diversity, evidence of hunter-gatherer ancestry, and the influence of steppe migrations, highlighting a complex and varied history of human interactions in the region.
Article Synopsis
- A new Y-STR multiplex called CombYplex was developed, along with a machine learning program named PredYMaLe, to predict haplogroups while meeting forensic standards.
- The CombYplex consists of two sub-panels (M1 and M2) focused on different mutation rates, and testing showed it effectively distinguishes haplogroup classes from a sample of 996 individuals.
- The machine learning models SVM and Random Forest achieved high prediction accuracy (around 97%), although some haplogroups had lower scores due to small sample sizes, highlighting the importance of a large and diverse training dataset for improving classification accuracy.
The study demonstrates the high potential of MS-based proteomics coupled to an iterative database search strategy for the in-depth investigation of ancient proteomes. An efficient targeted PRM MS-based approach, although limited to the detection of a single pair of sex-specific amelogenin peptides, allowed confirming the sex of individuals in ancient dental remains, an essential information for paleoanthropologists facing the issue of sex determination and dimorphism.
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