What did our ancestors look like?
A new
method of establishing hair and eye colour from modern forensic samples can
also be used to identify details from ancient human remains, finds a new study
published in BioMed Central's open access journal Investigative Genetics. The
HIrisPlex DNA analysis system was able to reconstruct hair and eye colour from
teeth up to 800 years old, including the Polish General Wladyslaw Sikorski
(1881 to 1943) confirming his blue eyes and blond hair. A team of researchers
from Poland and the Netherlands, who recently developed the HIrisPlex system
for forensic analysis, have now shown that this system is sufficiently robust
to successfully work on older and more degraded samples from human remains such
as teeth and bones. The system looks at 24 DNA polymorphisms (naturally
occurring variations) which can be used to predict eye and hair colour.
Dr
Wojciech Branicki, from the Institute of Forensic Research and Jagielonian
University, Kraków, who led this study together with Prof Manfred Kayser, from
the Erasmus University Rotterdam, explained, "This system can be used to
solve historical controversies where colour photographs or other records are
missing. HIrisPlex was able to confirm that General Wladyslaw Sikorski, who
died in a plane crash in 1943, had the blue eyes and blond hair present in
portraits painted years after his death. Some of our samples were from unknown
inmates of a World War II prison. In these cases HIrisPlex helped to put
physical features to the other DNA evidence."
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Jolanta Draus-Barini,
Susan Walsh, Ewelina Pospiech, Tomasz Kupiec, Henryk Glab, Wojciech Branicki
and Manfred Kayser
For
medieval samples, where DNA is even more degraded, this system was still able
to predict eye and hair colour (for the most degraded DNA samples eye colour
alone), identifying one mysterious woman buried in the crypt of the Benedictine
Abbey in Tyniec near Kraków, sometime during the 12th-14th centuries, as having
dark blond/brown hair and brown eyes.
Source: BioMed Central Limited
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Posted by Unknown
on Tuesday, January 15, 2013.
Filed under
Fossils And Ruins,
Plants And Animals
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