Applied Microbiomics by Dr Camilla Speller

Title: Omics of Archaeological Dental Calculus: prospects and challenges in reconstructing the ancient oral microbiome
Speaker: Dr. Camilla Speller, University of York (https://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/academic-staff/speller/)
Location: Worsley SR 8.43X
Date: Monday 20th February 2017
Time: 15.00-16.00
Abstract: High-throughput genomic and proteomic sequencing are revolutionizing modern biology and biomedicine. The application of these technologies to archaeological remains is opening new research directions in ancient microbiomes. The recent discovery that archaeological dental calculus (mineralized plaque) is a rich and robust reservoir for both human and bacterial proteins and DNA presents a new avenue for investigating past microbiomes and their relationship to health and disease. This talk will presents the results of metagenomic and metaproteomic analyses of human dental calculus specimens. Our results suggest that dental calculus not only preserves the oral microbiome, but serves as a long-term reservoir for local and systemic pathogens. Using bacterial DNA and proteins recovered from dental calculus it is now possible to examine evolutionary changes relating to pathogen virulence through time. Working with ancient degraded biomolecules, however, also presents major bioinformatic challenges. In this talk I will also discuss some of the issue we face in terms of assessing levels of contamination, developing optimized pipelines for taxonomic identifications, and studying microbial function within an incrementally deposited substrate.