Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA
- Kendra Ann Sirak1,
- Daniel Magalhaes Fernandes2,
- Olivia Cheronet3,
- Eadaoin Harney4,
- Matthew Mah5,
- Swapan Mallick5,
- Nadin Rohland6,
- Nicole Adamski6,
- Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht6,
- Kimberly Callan6,
- Francesca Candilio7,
- Ann Marie Lawson6,
- Kirsten Mandl8,
- Jonas Oppenheimer6,
- Kristin Stewardson6,
- Fatma Zalzala6,
- Alexandra Anders9,
- Juraj Bartík10,
- Alfredo Coppa11,
- Tumen Dashtseveg12,
- Sándor Évinger13,
- Zdeněk Farkaš10,
- Tamás Hajdu14,
- Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan15,
- Lauren McIntyre16,
- Vyacheslav Moiseyev17,
- Mercedes Okumura18,
- Ildikó Pap13,
- Michael Pietrusewsky19,
- Pál Raczky9,
- Alena Sefčáková20,
- Andrei Soficaru21,
- Tamás Szeniczey14,
- Béla Miklós Szóke22,
- Dennis Van Gerven23,
- Sergey Vasilyev24,
- Lynne Bell25,
- David Reich5 and
- Ron Pinhasi8,26
- 1 Harvard Medical School, University College Dublin;
- 2 University College Dublin, University of Vienna, University of Coimbra;
- 3 University College Dublin, University of Vienna;
- 4 Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, The Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean;
- 5 Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT;
- 6 Harvard Medical School;
- 7 University College Dublin;
- 8 University of Vienna;
- 9 Eötvös Loránd University;
- 10 Slovak National Museum, Archaeological Museum;
- 11 Sapienza Università
- 12 National University of Mongolia;
- 13 Hungarian Natural History Museum;
- 14 Hungarian Natural History Museum, Eötvös Loránd University;
- 15 National University of Mongolia, National Museum of Mongolia;
- 16 Oxford Archaeology;
- 17 Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Science;
- 18 University of São Paulo;
- 19 University of Hawai'i at Mānoa;
- 20 Slovak National Museum;
- 21 Romanian Academy;
- 22 Hungarian Academy of Sciences;
- 23 University of Colorado at Boulder;
- 24 Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology;
- 25 Simon Fraser University
Abstract
DNA recovery from ancient human remains has revolutionized our ability to reconstruct the genetic landscape of the past. Ancient DNA research has benefited from the identification of skeletal elements, such as the cochlear part of the osseous inner ear, that provide optimal contexts for DNA preservation; however, the rich genetic information obtained from the cochlea must be counterbalanced against the loss of morphological information caused by its sampling. Motivated by similarities in developmental processes and histological properties between the cochlea and auditory ossicles, we evaluate the ossicles as an alternative source of ancient DNA. We demonstrate that ossicles perform comparably to the cochlea in terms of DNA recovery, finding no substantial reduction in data quantity and minimal differences in data quality across preservation conditions. Ossicles can be sampled from intact skulls or disarticulated petrous bones without damage to surrounding bone, and we argue that they should be utilized when available to reduce damage to human remains. Our results identify another optimal skeletal element for ancient DNA analysis and add to a growing toolkit of sampling methods that help to better preserve skeletal remains for future research while maximizing the likelihood that ancient DNA analysis will produce useable results.
- Received December 10, 2019.
- Accepted February 11, 2020.
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
