Biology Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-29-2018
Publication Title
Scientific Reports
ISSN
2045-2322
Volume
8
Issue/No.
9822
First Page
1
Last Page
15
Abstract
Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient biomolecules. Recently, it has been proposed that dental calculus may provide a more robust environment for DNA preservation than other skeletal remains, but this has not been systematically tested. In this study, shotgun-sequenced data from paired dental calculus and dentin samples from 48 globally distributed individuals are compared using a metagenomic approach. Overall, we find DNA from dental calculus is consistently more abundant and less contaminated than DNA from dentin. The majority of DNA in dental calculus is microbial and originates from the oral microbiome; however, a small but consistent proportion of DNA (mean 0.08 ± 0.08%, range 0.007–0.47%) derives from the host genome. Host DNA content within dentin is variable (mean 13.70 ± 18.62%, range 0.003–70.14%), and for a subset of dentin samples (15.21%), oral bacteria contribute > 20% of total DNA. Human DNA in dental calculus is highly fragmented, and is consistently shorter than both microbial DNA in dental calculus and human DNA in paired dentin samples. Finally, we find that microbial DNA fragmentation patterns are associated with guanine-cytosine (GC) content, but not aspects of cellular structure.
NSUWorks Citation
Mann, Allison E.; Susanna Sabin; Kirsten Ziesemer; Ashild J. Vagene; Hannes Schroeder; Andrew T. Ozga; Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan; Courtney A. Hofman; James A. Fellows Yates; Domingo C. Salazar-Garcia; Bruno Frohlich; Mark Aldenderfer; Menno Hoogland; Christopher Read; George R. Milner; Anne C. Stone; Cecil M. Lewis Jr.; Johannes Krause; Corinne Hofman; Kirsten I. Bos; and Christina Warinner. 2018. "Differential preservation of endogenous human and microbial DNA in dental calculus and dentin." Scientific Reports 8, (9822): 1-15. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-28091-9.
Supplementary Information
41598_2018_28091_MOESM2_ESM (1).xlsx (1957 kB)
Dataset 1
ORCID ID
0000-0003-4540-7106
ResearcherID
D-1147-2018
DOI
10.1038/s41598-018-28091-9
Included in
Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Biology Commons, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Commons, Genetics Commons
Comments
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.