🚨The SPAAM Community is happy to announce that it will offer its third (virtual) summer school course sponsored by the Werner Siemens-Stiftung
INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT METAGENOMICS
⏰ 5th - 9th Aug 2024
💀Applications are now open until May 31st 2024
Apply: spaam-community.org/wss-summer-sch…🧵[1/5]

Excited to share our new manuscript on Down and Edwards syndrome in ancient populations. Lots of hard work from a gifted, cross-disciplinary team of researchers incl Kay Prüfer, Maïté Rivollat, Wolfgang Haak, Stephan Schiffels, Johannes Krause and Roberto Risch. doi.org/10.1038/s41467…

Today, our paper on kinship and social organisation at the Early Bronze Age burial site of Leubingen was published! Lots of thanks to Wolfgang Haak Ben Rohrlach Ainash Childebayeva Mario Küßner, Jan Nováček, Corina Knipper and Johannes Krause for making this possible!
nature.com/articles/s4159…

We are excited to release READv2, a new version of the popular tool for detecting biol relatedness in aDNA data. Erkin Alaçamlı made it faster and more precise than v1 while adding features for telling apart sibs and parent-offspring + 3rd degree

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biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

🧬Introducing aMeta, a fully automated ancient metagenomics pipeline enabling organisms detection all the way to final authentication! Collaborative magic between NBIS/SciLifeLab and the Anders Götherström lab at Centre for Palaeogenetics and more! 🌟
A thread: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

#MetagenomicsMonday 🧬
A large-scale #environmentalDNA metagenomic study of ancient plant and mammal communities! Researchers analyzed 535 permafrost and lake sediment samples from across the Arctic spanning the past 50,000 years. 🦣🫎🌿🌲 #sedaDNA
nature.com/articles/s4158…

Scientists from #CpgSthlm & Friedlander lab have for the first time recovered RNA from an extinct species! From ∼130 yr old dry tissue!

A game-changer for studies on gene expression in extinct species & RNA virus evolution (SARS, ebola, influensa, etc)?

genome.cshlp.org/content/early/…

Science’s carbon footprint - lab research produced an estimated 5.5 million tonnes globally in 2015, accounting for nearly 2% of total plastic waste. Now a Wellcome report looks at how health research can cut emissions nature.com/articles/d4158…

Extensive family trees provide insight into the social organization of a #Neolithic community. New study in nature by Maïté Rivollat, Wolfgang Haak & an intl. research team. MPI-EVA Leipzig Université de Bordeaux PACEA See: tinyurl.com/yyew69ym & nature.com/articles/s4158…

This example has four fletches, which were cut to shape and fastened to the arrow shaft using tar and thread. Hard to believe that the arrow is c. 1500 years old, but it is🙂

2-million-year-old microbial and viral communities disentangled using ancient environmental DNA. This was far from straightforward. Why? Take a read of our new preprint out today. Fantastic work by Antonio Fernandez-Guerra and team. sedaDNA scientific society ⁦🧵

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

New case of Mesolithic violence just published: a young adult female who was attacked on at least two occasions, and killed with blunt force trauma to the skull. Let's take a look...

Old plague alert! Excited to share our new paper on a 4000-year-old Yersinia pestis genome from Britain! 🧬💀🦠
nature.com/articles/s4146…

Huge new paper on #Neanderthal birch tar just dropped!
New images & scans of the two Königsaue pieces, plus lots of v. exciting results, with the headline being:
- chemical analyses = *both* made using trickier oxygen-restricted, underground methods

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

In this preprint, I survey data archiving in ancient genomics—I find widespread shortcomings, which hinder reproducibility and data reuse. I argue that we need to step up our collective archiving game in #aDNA genomics, with six practical recommendations:

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

If you're looking for authenticated ref genomes for microbes - check out the 3,329 assemblies my team at @officialATCC has produced.😁💪🧬😉

We're presenting an update at #BioITWorld this week too, so DM me for a meet up! genomes.atcc.org/genomes?orderB…
#genomics #bioinformatics

It matters who does science: 'Scientists should embrace their humanity rather than pretending that they are a bunch of automatons who instantly reach perfectly objective conclusions' science.org/content/blog-p…

These 60 gut microbes have evolved alongside humans since we first left Africa cosmosmagazine.com/people/these-6…

Stone Age molecules: Scientists rebuild microbial natural products up to 100,000 years old using dental calculus of humans & Neandertals. New study led by Leibniz-HKI, MPI-EVA Leipzig & Harvard University now out in Science Magazine. See: bit.ly/44w5M20 & doi.org/10.1126/scienc…

⚠️New paper⚠️out today in the Int. J. of Osteoarchaeology: 'Cleaning archaeological bones: Influence of water, ethanol, and acetone on microhardness' with Lucía López-Polín #LACourtenay #AFabregat IPHES-CERCA Universitat Rovira i Virgili

I am going to tell you a bit about it 👇