A systematic investigation of human DNA preservation in medieval skeletons

Abstract

27 Ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses necessitate the destructive sampling of archaeological material. 28 Currently the dense inner portion of the petrous pyramid, the location of the skull that houses the 29 inner ear, is the most sought after skeletal element for molecular analyses of ancient humans as it 30 has been shown to yield high amounts of endogenous DNA. Destructive sampling of the petrous 31 pyramid, assuming its recovery, is often not recommended for highly valued specimens. To 32 investigate alternatives, we present a survey of human aDNA preservation for each of ten skeletal 33 elements in a skeletal collection from Medieval Germany. Through comparison of human DNA 34 content and quality we confirm best performance of the petrous pyramid and identify seven 35 additional sampling locations across four skeletal elements that yield adequate aDNA for most 36 applications in human palaeogenetics. Our study provides a better perspective on DNA preservation 37 across the human skeleton and takes a further step toward the more responsible use of ancient 38 materials in human aDNA studies. 39 2 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.20.106971; this version posted May 22, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 40