155 - Ancient problems require ancient solutions - part 1
from Micro binfie podcast Hosted by Microbial Bioinformatics
What can DNA recovered from bones, teeth and paleofaeces tell us that living samples can't — and how do you keep modern contamination from drowning out a 1,000-year-old signal? In Part 1, host Nabil Ali Khan is joined by James Fellows Yates (bioinformatician, biomolecular archaeologist, and editor of the new open textbook Introduction to Ancient Metagenomics) for a tour of the field. They cover why ancient DNA arrives as 30–70 bp fragments with characteristic C→T "smiley plot" damage, how endogenous yields as low as 1% still count as a good sample, and the wet-lab lengths (bodysuits, UV, no kits) needed to keep libraries clean. They also dig into the big questions ancient microbial DNA is now answering — plague and TB origins, oral-microbiome loss since the Neolithic, AMR trends read from historical bear calculus — and how the SPAAM community, NF-core/eager and AncientMetagenomeDir grew up to support the work. Guest: James Fellows Yates Hosts: Dr Nabil Ali Khan, Dr Lee Katz, Prof Andrew Page SPAAM community — https://spaam-community.org nf-core/eager — https://nf-co.re/eager AncientMetagenomeDir — https://github.com/SPAAM-community/AncientMetagenomeDir Introduction to Ancient Metagenomics (open textbook) — https://www.spaam-community.org/intro-to-ancient-metagenomics-book/
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