Characterized by considerable climatic instability, the Pleistocene was a time of changing ecological conditions that affected both plant and animal life. Glacialinterglacial cycles were irregular and created contrasting landscapes and environments in many regions over time (Hofreiter and Stewart, 2009). These regional and global changes had a profound impact on animal populations, resulting in...

Studies incorporating sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) analyses to investigate paleo-environments have increased considerably over the last few years, and possibility of utilising archived sediment cores from previous field campaigns could unlock an immense resource sampling material for such paleo-investigations. However, sedaDNA research is at a high risk contamination by modern environmenta...

We have developed a micromachined flow cell consisting of a flow channel integrated with micropipettes. The flow cell is used in combination with an optical trap set-up (optical tweezers) to study mechanical and structural properties of ADNA molecules. The flow cell was realised using silicon micromachining including the so-called buried channel technology to fabricate the micropipettes, the we...

While cytosine methylation has been widely studied in extant populations, relatively few studies have analyzed methylation in ancient DNA. Most existing studies of epigenetic marks in ancient DNA have inferred patterns of methylation in highly degraded samples using post-mortem damage to cytosines as a proxy for cytosine methylation levels. However, this approach limits the inference of methyla...

Genetic variation in microsatellites is rarely examined in the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) due to the low quantity of nuclear DNA in the fossil record together with the lack of characterized nuclear markers in extinct species. 454 sequencing platforms provide a new high-throughput technology capable of generating up to 1 gigabases per run as short (200-400-bp) read lengths. 454 data were genera...

The perpetual burden of tuberculosis (TB) keeps drawing the focus research on this disease. Among other risk factors (e.g., poor living conditions, malnutrition, smoking, HIV infection, etc.), being in close contact with a TB infected person requires special attention. For better understanding disease, paleopathological investigations concerning have been carried out various techniques for long...