Neanderthal Microbes
Title: Neanderthal microbes reveal surprises about what they ate and whom they kissed
Source: Sarah Kaplan at Washington Post
Date: 14MAR2017
Summary:
University of Adelaide’s paleomicrobiologist Lauren Weyrich led a new study, which examines the microorganisms found in the teeth of four Neanderthals. They used genetic sequencing to identify a bacterium that still dwells in human mouths today. This discovery suggests that Neanderthals and humans share similar microbes. In addition to the bacterium, they also discovered traces of a tree that produces an ingredient used for aspirin, and they also found traces of Penicillium. This gave the scientists an idea that Neanderthals may have been self medicating, though without a larger sample size, this analysis cannot be confirmed. The study also found a single-celled organism known to be found between humans’ gums and teeth suggesting that the organism was introduced to the Neanderthal by kissing an ancient human. This supports the hypothesis that around 120,000 years ago, Neanderthals and ancient humans had relations.
Connections:
I found this article to be interesting as we had just finished the bioinformatics analysis of our bacteria’s genome sequencing.
Analysis:
One of the most interesting things I found about this article was that it states that the microbial biome discovered was the oldest ever to be sequenced. The article did a good job of keeping the reader’s attention, though they did tend to make broad leaps in their analysis with such a small sample size of the Neanderthal population. They do, however, at least mention this failing in the article.
Question:
This article made me curious as to what other microbial similarities there are linking Neanderthals to humans.