Scholarship for studying at a German institution. €7860

Postgraduate scholarship for studying at the University of Oxford. £1000 [Declined]

Grass roots community of early career researchers in ancient metagenomics, aiming promote collaboration and knowledge sharing the field.

A community effort to collect a curated set of analysis pipelines built using Nextflow.

Like modern metagenomics, ancient metagenomics is a highly data-rich discipline, with the added challenge that the DNA of interest is degraded and, depending on the sample type, in low abundance. In September 2020, early career researchers in the field of ancient metagenomics met (Standards, Precautions & Advances in Ancient Metagenomics 2 [SPAAM2] community meeting) to discuss the state of the field and how to address current challenges. Here, in an effort to bridge the gap between ancient and modern metagenomics, we highlight and reflect upon some common misconceptions, provide a brief overview of the challenges in our field, and point toward useful resources for potential reviewers and newcomers to the field.

The oral microbiome plays key roles in human biology, health, and disease, but little is known about the global diversity, variation, or evolution of this microbial community. To better understand the evolution and changing ecology of the human oral microbiome, we analyzed 124 dental biofilm metagenomes from humans, including Neanderthals and Late Pleistocene to present-day modern humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, as well as New World howler monkeys for comparison.

We present an advanced, and entirely redesigned and extended version of the EAGER pipeline for the analysis of ancient genomic data. This Nextflow pipeline aims to address three main themes: accessibility and adaptability to different computing configurations, reproducibility to ensure robust analytical standards, and updating the pipeline to the latest routine ancient genomic practices

AncientMetagenomeDir (archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3980833) is a collection of annotated metagenomic sample lists derived from published studies that provide basic, standardised metadata and accession numbers to allow rapid data retrieval from online repositories.

We highlight common errors and sources of contamination across ancient DNA datasets, provide recommendations for dietary DNA validation, and call for caution in the interpretation of diet from dental calculus and other archaeological microbiome substrates.

[Preprint] AncientMetagenomeDir (archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3980833) is a collection of indices of published genetic data deriving from ancient microbial samples that provides basic, standardised metadata and accession numbers to allow rapid data retrieval from online repositories.

[Preprint] In the context of this heterogeneous landscape, we present nf-core/eager, an advanced and entirely redesigned pipeline for the analysis of ancient genomic data. nf-core/eager builds on existing ideas and concepts introduced in the original EAGER pipeline, and improves various aspects of the analysis procedure by employing computational frameworks such as Nextflow and nf-core.

In the present article, we highlight how developments in five such methodologies (radiocarbon approaches, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, ancient proteomics, microscopy) have helped drive detailed analysis of specific megafaunal species, their particular ecological settings, and responses to new competitors or predators, climate change, and other external phenomena.

Here, we compare the microbial profiles of modern dental plaque, modern dental calculus, and historic dental calculus to establish expected differences between these substrates.

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.

Here, we use a multi-method approach utilising proteomic, stable isotope and genetic techniques to identify and generate twenty woolly mammoth mitochondrial genomes, and associated dietary stable isotopic data, from highly fragmentary Late Pleistocene material from central Europe.

Microbial archaeology is flourishing in the era of high-throughput sequencing, revealing the agents behind devastating historical plagues, identifying the cryptic movements of pathogens in prehistory, and reconstructing the ancestral microbiota of humans. Here, we introduce the fundamental concepts and theoretical framework of the discipline, then discuss applied methodologies for pathogen identification and microbiome characterization from archaeological samples.