An ancient Egyptian genome has finally been unraveled after four decades of study, thanks to a sample collected from a mummy dating back to the time of the first pyramids.
The achievement marks the first complete sequencing of a genome of such antiquity collected from the region. The genetic data revealed information about the movement of people over millennia, as 80% of the individual’s DNA corresponds to ancient North Africans, while 20% is related to ancient West Asians.
The remains reveal a story of a hard life of manual labor, lived by an individual who possibly belonged to an ancient Egyptian pottery community.
A Decades-Long Genetic Quest
Forty years ago, Svante Pääbo, a Nobel Prize-winning Swedish geneticist, conducted the first successful extraction of ancient Egyptian DNA, although his work only resulted in a partial sequence. Now, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) have conducted the first complete sequencing after working with the oldest Egyptian DNA sample ever collected.
“Forty years have passed since the early pioneering attempts to retrieve DNA from mummies without successful sequencing of an ancient Egyptian genome,” said co-author Pontus Skoglund, Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute. “Ancient Egypt is a place of extraordinary written history and archaeology, but challenging DNA preservation has meant that no genomic record of ancestry in early Egypt has been available for comparison.”
“Building on this past research, new and powerful genetic techniques have allowed us to cross these technical boundaries and rule out contaminating DNA, providing the first genetic evidence for potential movements of people in Egypt at this time,” Skoglund added.
Hellbound and Down 