| Title: |
Ancient and Contemporary Analyses of the Impact of the Agricultural Transition on the Human Oral Microbiome |
| Authors: |
Abdul-Aziz, Muslihudeen Abdul-Razaq |
| Contributors: |
Weyrich, Laura S.; Cooper, Alan; Haak, Wolfgang; School of Biological Sciences : Australian Centre for Ancient DNA |
| Publication Year: |
2018 |
| Collection: |
The University of Adelaide: Digital Library |
| Subject Terms: |
Microbiome; oral microbiome; dental calculus; ancient DNA; DNA extraction; library preparation; diet; hunter-gatherer; agriculture; salivary; industrial revolution; oral health |
| Description: |
Communities of bacteria inhabit different parts of the human body and influence human metabolic, immune and even nervous systems, playing key roles in human health and disease. This microbial world and its genomes were recently discovered and was termed the "microbiome”. Recent research suggests that human cultural changes such as the human transition to agriculture and the subsequent Industrial revolution changed the human microbiome. These changes may underpin many modern metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, and explain why modern metabolic disease is more prevalent in humans not currently living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. However, limited geographical sampling has resulted in an incomplete understanding of the impact of these human cultural changes on the microbiome. Expanding sampling to lesser-studied locations, such as Africa and the Near East has the potential to improve our understanding of the roles that microbiota play in our health. In this thesis, I obtain ancient DNA from calcified dental plaque (calculus) to describe the first oral microbiomes from ancient Near Eastern individuals over a 7000-year span. This ground-breaking data allowed me to explore the impact of agriculture at the earliest sites of agriculture in ancient Egypt and the Levant. First, I explore how research into the nascent field of microbiome has evolved over the past two decades and how microbiome research may be influenced by new interactions between the human genome and microbiome. Second, I examine the impact of widely used and novel ancient DNA extraction and library preparation methods on microbiome composition and assess methods that could allow future researchers to obtain higher yields of ancient DNA from dental calculus samples from poorly preserved samples. Third, I use ancient and historic shotgun oral metagenomes obtained from dental calculus remains of individuals from Africa, the Near East and Asia to explore the oral microbiome of ancient hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists to examine how the ... |
| Document Type: |
thesis |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
http://hdl.handle.net/2440/119925 |
| Availability: |
http://hdl.handle.net/2440/119925 |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.60ACDDD8 |
| Database: |
BASE |