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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Recently, scientists in the United States have reconstructed the oral microbial communities of dozens of ancient humans and recombined the genes of extinct microbes. The restoration of ancient microbial genes may reveal the relationship between human lifestyle and bacteria.

(Andrew Curry / tr. by Phil Newell)

Editor | Liu Jiayu

Dental plaque can preserve DNA and remain intact for thousands of years.

About 19000 years ago, a woman died in northern Spain and was dyed red because she was buried in natural ochre. Archaeologists called her the "Red Lady". Lady Red's teeth are used by scientists to study extinct bacteria and their chemical products.

Scientists have successfully reconstructed the ancient human oral microorganism DNA from dental stones and hard dental plaque on teeth, and researchers have successfully restored and reconstructed the genetic material of bacteria in Lady Red and dozens of other ancient human mouths.

The study successfully replicated enzymes produced by bacteria that help digest nutrients.

Nicola Segata, a biologist at the University of Trento in Italy, says changes in diet and the use of antibiotics have greatly changed the microbiome of modern humans. "sequencing ancient microbes and recreating their chemicals will help us determine what functions the human microbiome may have had in the past, and which functions we have lost," he said. " Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a molecular paleoecologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, added that restoring these "disappearing" genes could help design new treatments for the disease.

The study revealed which microbial species might coexist with humans before the advent of antibiotics and processed foods. But researchers can only use modern microbes as a reference, limiting the replication and reconstruction of palaeomiota. "our research can only refer to existing known bacteria, which limits bacterial recombination," said Christina Warinner, a geneticist at Harvard University in the United States. "We may have ignored the DNA of unknown or possibly extinct organisms."

Why do ancient microbes disappear from the human body? Werner's team combined Pseudomonas aeruginosa with a pair of ancient genes to produce proteins that produce furan molecules, and modern bacteria are thought to use furan to transmit cellular signals. This study shows that archaea have the same effect.

Werner's reconstructed microbes seem to be at odds with the oral microbiome, a green algae bacteria whose modern close relatives, universal photosynthesis, can survive in trace amounts of light and in anaerobic conditions, such as stagnant water. This microbe does not appear in the mouths of modern people and seems to have disappeared from ancient humans about 10,000 years ago.

The researchers hypothesized that the bacteria might have entered the mouth because ancient humans drank water near caves, or that it was once a normal part of some ancient human oral microbiome, living on faint light that penetrated the cheeks.

Dental plaque is an ideal place to find ancient microbes. Teeth wrap leftover food and other organic matter in the mineral lattice of the teeth, which helps preserve DNA and protects DNA from contamination.

The restoration of ancient microbial genes may reveal the relationship between humans and bacteria. Humans have coevolved with microbes and parasites for hundreds of thousands of years. Compounds produced by ancient microorganisms may have played an important role in digestion and immune response.

References:

Https://www.science.org/content/article/lost-microbial-genes-found-dental-plaque-ancient-humans

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