Parchment DNA is window on medieval past

• Autores: Chris Baraniuk
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3137, 2017, pág. 16
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Matthew Collins at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues at the University of York, UK, and Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, turned to various ancient texts to see what the DNA in their pages could show. One was the York Gospels, thought to have been written around AD 1000. Conservators periodically clean such books with rubber erasers. The waste rubbings are usually thrown away, but Collins and his colleagues analyzed them to see what proteins and DNA were present. The proteins helped identify the animals used to make the pages--mostly cattle in the case of the York Gospels. That's valuable information for conservators trying to restore manuscripts as faithfully as possible. The analysis also identified bacterial DNA including some from Saccharopolyspora, a genus associated with unsightly spots on old parchment. Finding its DNA could alert conservators to the likelihood of this problem affecting their manuscripts