Ancient DNA and Paleogenetics with Stephanie Marciniak
Episode 46 - January 31, 2021
Stephanie Marciniak (Penn State University) joins Merle and Lee to discuss some of the fascinating developments in studying historical diseases from a scientific perspective: ancient DNA and more broadly paleogenetics. Stephanie provides some context for this research approach, before touching upon several related topics: the process of researching ancient DNA, the diseases that we can (or cannot) identify in human remains, some of the research questions that interest ancient DNA scientists, and a few issues concerning numbers of remains and of positive identifications of disease.
Further Reading
- Hofreiter, M., Paijmans, J.L., Goodchild, H., Speller, C.F., Barlow, A., Fortes, G.G., Thomas, J.A., Ludwig, A. and Collins, M.J., 2015. The future of ancient DNA: Technical advances and conceptual shifts. BioEssays, 37(3), pp.284-293.
- Sirak, K.A. and Sedig, J.W., 2019. Balancing analytical goals and anthropological stewardship in the midst of the paleogenomics revolution. World Archaeology, 51(4), pp.560-573.
- Morozova, I., Kasianov, A., Bruskin, S., Neukamm, J., Molak, M., Batieva, E., Pudło, A., Rühli, F.J. and Schuenemann, V.J., 2020. New ancient Eastern European Yersinia pestis genomes illuminate the dispersal of plague in Europe. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1812), p.20190569.
- Giffin, K., Lankapalli, A.K., Sabin, S., Spyrou, M.A., Posth, C., Kozakaitė, J., Friedrich, R., Miliauskienė, Ž., Jankauskas, R., Herbig, A. and Bos, K.I., 2020. A treponemal genome from an historic plague victim supports a recent emergence of yaws and its presence in 15th century Europe. Scientific reports, 10(1), pp.1-13.
- Duchêne, S., Ho, S.Y., Carmichael, A.G., Holmes, E.C. and Poinar, H., 2020. The recovery, interpretation and use of ancient pathogen genomes. Current Biology, 30(19), pp.R1215-R1231.
Our Guest
Stephanie Marciniak,
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University
