Assessing Metagenomic Signals Recovered from Lyuba, a 42,000-Year-Old Permafrost-Preserved Woolly Mammoth Calf

Ferrari, Giada; Lischer, Heidi; Neukamm, Judith; Rayo, Enrique; Borel, Nicole; Pospischil, Andreas; Rühli, Frank; Bouwman, Abigail; Campana, Michael

doi:10.3390/genes9090436

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Ferrari, G., Lischer, H., Neukamm, J., Rayo, E., Borel, N., Pospischil, A., Rühli, F., Bouwman, A., & Campana, M. (2018). Assessing Metagenomic Signals Recovered from Lyuba, a 42,000-Year-Old Permafrost-Preserved Woolly Mammoth Calf. Genes, 9(9), 436. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes9090436

Abstract

The reconstruction of ancient metagenomes from archaeological material, and their implication in human health and evolution, is one of the most recent advances in paleomicrobiological studies. However, as for all ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, environmental and laboratory contamination need to be specifically addressed. Here we attempted to reconstruct the tissue-specific metagenomes of a 42,000-year-old, permafrost-preserved woolly mammoth calf through shotgun high-throughput sequencing. We analyzed the taxonomic composition of all tiss