EAGER: Identification of specific pathogens in human dental calculus

历史记载表明，传染病塑造了人类的历史，但许多过去的人口的历史记录是不完整的或不存在的。疾病过程也可以在骨骼中进行研究，但由于并非所有疾病都能产生骨骼证据，许多传染病在考古记录中实际上是看不见的。这个EAGER项目将开发从牙结石中恢复特定病原体DNA的新方案和最佳实践，牙结石是一种经常保存在骨骼牙齿上的钙化斑块。研究人员将使用20世纪早期罗伯特·j·特里解剖学收藏的骨骼中的牙结石样本，这些骨骼被临床诊断为结核病、梅毒或肺炎——这些都是过去的主要杀手。这种方法可以通过扩大我们可以在骨骼样本中具体识别的疾病套件，潜在地改变我们过去对疾病经验的理解。这一信息对于进一步了解传染病对人口、人口结构和进化的影响具有重要意义。这项研究的协议将在同行评审的学术出版物中传播，并在史密森尼国家自然历史博物馆、密西西比州立大学洛伊斯·道德尔·科布考古博物馆和俄克拉何马州教育工作者进化倡议的广泛和不同受众的科学教育计划中得到强调。本项目由美国国家科学基金会生物人类学项目和刺激竞争研究实验项目（EPSCoR）共同资助。本项目将开发并系统地测试一种新的牙结石病原体检测方法。研究人员将使用靶向基因组学、宏基因组学和宏蛋白质组学的先进技术，分析来自Terry Collection患者的结石样本（N=60），这些患者死前和临床诊断为传染病。具体目的是确定(1)是否可以成功地从已知传染病患者的牙结石中鉴定病原体生物分子；(2)病原检测技术的敏感性；(3)牙结石中是否同时存在死亡时主动感染和死亡时已解决感染。如果成功的话，这些工具将能够识别和调查人类骨骼材料中的特定传染病，如梅毒、肺结核和肺炎，否则这些疾病在考古记录中无法以经验高度确定。

Historical accounts show that infectious diseases have shaped human population history, but historical records are incomplete or non-existent for many past populations. Disease processes can also be studied in skeletons, but because not all diseases produce bony evidence, many infectious agents are effectively invisible in the archaeological record. This EAGER project will develop new protocols and best practices for recovering specific pathogen DNA from dental calculus, which is calcified plaque that often preserves on the teeth of skeletons. The investigators will use dental calculus samples from skeletons in the early 20th century Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection who had clinical diagnoses of tuberculosis, syphilis, or pneumonia - all significant killers in the past. This method could potentially transform our understanding of disease experience in the past by expanding the suite of diseases that we can specifically identify in skeletal samples. This information will be of great importance in further understanding the effects of infectious disease on human population demographics and evolution. The protocols from this study will be disseminated in peer-reviewed scholarly publications, as well as highlighted in science education programming for broad and diverse audiences at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Mississippi State's Lois Dowdle Cobb Archaeology Museum, and the Oklahoma Educators Evolve initiative. This project is jointly funded by NSF's Biological Anthropology program and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This project will develop and systematically test a novel method for pathogen detection in dental calculus. The investigators will analyze calculus samples (N=60) from Terry Collection individuals with ante-mortem, clinical diagnoses of infectious disease, using advanced techniques in targeted-genomics, metagenomics, and metaproteomics. Specific aims are to determine (1) whether pathogen biomolecules can be successfully identified from the dental calculus of individuals with known infectious diseases; (2) the sensitivity of these pathogen detection techniques; and (3) whether both active-at-death and resolved-at-death infections be detected in dental calculus. If successful, these tools would enable the identification and investigation of specific infectious diseases in human skeletal material, such as syphilis, tuberculosis, and pneumonia, which are otherwise not empirically identifiable with a high degree of certainty in the archaeological record.