ERC Mentoring Initiative MOB7M14

Infectious disease has likely had the highest impact on human evolution, yet the true burden of communicable disease on historic human populations has not been able to be determined. Next Generation Sequencing has made it possible to identify ancient pathogens in victims and the field of archaeo-proteomics is rapidly developing; however, we still have not been able to routinely detect the most common causes of child mortality (most of which are single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) pathogens), the rate of maternal mortality, nor distinguish between survivors of communicable disease and those who were never exposed. We have been unable to directly assess individual and community immune status or disease burden, nor how shifts in subsistence strategy and environment have affected our susceptibility to disease and shaped our immune systems today. ANCIENT-ANTIBODIES will adapt cutting-edge tools and pioneer methodologies for biologically studying communicable disease burden in ancient human populations by exploiting emerging paleo-proteomics methods, ancient DNA and the biological mechanism of immunological memory, allowing an unprecedented insight to our human past. The project will utilise well-preserved and well-studied medieval human osteo-archaeological remains from plague pandemic contexts to develop and validate molecular methods for (1) isolating, sequencing and matching ancient antibodies to determine pathogen exposure, (2) identifying ancient ssRNA pathogens (e.g. measles, mumps, and influenza) and (3) detect pregnancy in skeletal remains. Combining these new methodologies, this project will build the foundation for a new field of study: ancient immunomics and provide the methodological framework for settling long-standing debates on the impact of environmental, cultural and genetic shifts on the evolution of the human immune system.