研究人员调查了12个尼安德特人和52个解剖学上的现代人的牙结石，时间跨度为10万年前到现在，并重建了459个细菌元基因组（MAG）。研究人员发现旧石器时代中期和晚期的7名个体共有一个生物合成基因组（BGC），可以异源生产一类以前未知的代谢物，研究人员称之为古呋喃类。
这种旧生物技术方法表明，可行的生物合成机制可以从保存的古生物的遗传物质中产生，从而可以获得旧石器时代的天然产物，并为天然产物的探索提供一个有希望的领域。
据了解，过去十年来，古DNA领域的重大进展提供了对过去古基因组多样性的访问，但这一不断增长的古基因组的各种功能和生物合成能力在很大程度上仍然难以捉摸。
附：英文原文
Title: Natural products from reconstructed bacterial genomes of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic
Author: Martin Klapper, Alexander Hübner, Anan Ibrahim, Ina Wasmuth, Maxime Borry, Veit G. Haensch, Shuaibing Zhang, Walid K. Al-Jammal, Harikumar Suma, James A. Fellows Yates, Jasmin Frangenberg, Irina M. Velsko, Somak Chowdhury, Rosa Herbst, Evgeni V. Bratovanov, Hans-Martin Dahse, Therese Horch, Christian Hertweck, Manuel Ramon González Morales, Lawrence Guy Straus, Ivan Vilotijevic, Christina Warinner, Pierre Stallforth
Issue&Volume: 2023-05-04
Abstract: Major advances over the past decade in the field of ancient DNA are providing access to past paleogenomic diversity, but the diverse functions and biosynthetic capabilities of this growing paleome remain largely elusive. Here, we investigated the dental calculus of 12 Neanderthals and 52 anatomically modern humans spanning 100 kya to the present and reconstructed 459 bacterial metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). We identified a biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) shared by seven Middle and Upper Paleolithic individuals that allows for the heterologous production of a class of previously unknown metabolites we name paleofurans. This paleobiotechnological approach demonstrates that viable biosynthetic machinery can be produced from the preserved genetic material of ancient organisms, allowing access to natural products from the Pleistocene and providing a promising area for natural product exploration.
DOI: adf5300
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf5300