For the last six months, we've had Lucas Siero from Utrecht University visiting us for an internship, working on some #palaeoproteomics method development. It was a joy to have you join our group Lucas, and good luck with the rest of your studies!

For the last six months, @adrianaleite.bsky.social has been visiting us from @icarehb.bsky.social. Thank you for this time Adriana, it has been a joy to have you in our group and we hope to see you again soon!

Finally, the Contaminator may no longer be with us, but we are very grateful for his research efforts as well! He did get a nice snack as a reward for his contribution.

Finally, we set out to answer the major question about the Khudji tooth - who did it belong to? The reconstructed sequences indicate that it is not a Denisovan, and is unlikely a modern human. That means it's most likely a Neanderthal - but direct molecular evidence is still needed in the future.

Also here, the bleach decontamination approach was very successful, as the vast majority of human skin proteins were removed, and the endogenous dentine proteins were left unharmed.

We then applied the bleach decontamination to a Pleistocene hominin tooth from Khudji, Tajikistan, which was previously found to be heavily contaminated with human skin proteins, likely from the decades of handling since its discovery in 1997.

We found that while most decontamination methods had variable success, one of them removed virtually all contamination, without causing any damage to the endogenous horse proteins - a brief wash with bleach (sodium hypochlorite).

First, we found that decontamination is really necessary, as the reconstructed horse proteome was altered after contamination, even when we did not take the dog contamination into consideration in our analyses. Additionally, low-abundance proteins and protein regions were lost after contamination!

We then used five previously published methods for decontamination: Bleach, HCl, EDTA, water and UV irradiation, and compared them to uncontaminated (original) and non-decontaminated samples of the same bone.

To solve this problem, we enlisted the help of our office dog, Tjorven. He used his research expertise to contaminate a Pleistocene Equus sp. bone with saliva, skin, and fur, to approximate years of contamination with a complex proteome, which easily absorbed to the bone.

New publication! 🎉 Here you can read all about dog drool, bleach, and a probable Central Asian Neanderthal child:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...

Last week we had a major celebration! 🎉Congratulations to Ragnheiður Diljá Ásmundsdóttir who successfully defended her PhD on skeletal proteome variation in the human skeleton! 🦴 #palaeoproteomics

We managed to solve the puzzles of the escape room before the vikings got us!

📣 Paper alert! 📣 In this review, available as early view in @paleoanthjourn.bsky.social, we discuss "Paleoproteomic Contributions, and Current Limitations, to Understanding Middle and Late Pleistocene Human Evolution". Thanks to all coauthors! paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.ph...

Happy holidays to all our colleagues and collaborators! We cannot wait to continue doing amazing research with you again next year ☃️