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Research Interests: Biology and Ancient DNA
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The identification of the source of a specific soil sample is a crucial step in forensic investigations. Rapid advances in next generation sequencing (NGS) technology and the strong reduction of the cost of sequencing have recently opened... more
The identification of the source of a specific soil sample is a crucial step in forensic investigations. Rapid advances in next generation sequencing (NGS) technology and the strong reduction of the cost of sequencing have recently opened new perspectives. In the present work a metabarcoding approach has been successfully applied to forensic and environmental soil samples, allowing the accurate and sensitive analysis of microflora (mfDNA), plants, metazoa, and protozoa DNA. The identification of the biological component by DNA metabarcoding is a strong element for the discrimination of samples geologically very similar but coming for distinct environments.
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Supplementary Materials, 16 supplementary tables and appendix
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# The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract It has been recorded that one of the possible causes that eventually escalated into the 1857 manslaughter at Mountain Meadows in Southern Utah... more
# The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract It has been recorded that one of the possible causes that eventually escalated into the 1857 manslaughter at Mountain Meadows in Southern Utah was the poisoning of an open spring by the Fancher–Baker party as they crossed the Utah territory on their way from Arkansas to California. Historical accounts report that a number of cattle died, followed by human casualties from those that came in contact with the dead animals. Even after the Arkansas party departed, animals continued to perish and people were still afflicted by some unknown plague. Proctor Hancock Robison, a local 14-year-old boy, died shortly after skinning one of the “poisoned ” cows. A careful review of the histor-ical records, along with the more recent scientific literature, seems to exclude the likelihood of actual poisoning in favor
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Abstract In the winter of 2011 a corpse of a teenager was found in a fallow field after three month of environmental exposure. The autopsy showed no sign of rape but the presence of several cuts on the victim’s body. Despite exposure to... more
Abstract In the winter of 2011 a corpse of a teenager was found in a fallow field after three month of environmental exposure. The autopsy showed no sign of rape but the presence of several cuts on the victim’s body. Despite exposure to weathering and animals, the clothes from the waist up were well preserved, whereas the trousers were extensively torn and the underpants were clearly cut. Searching evidence from the perpetrator was difficult since the traces present on the victim’s clothes and underpants were subjected to morphological and chromatic modifications due to the environmental exposure. Initially, sample collection was based on an integrated approach that involved circumstantial information and inspection with the forensic light. The use of this light source allowed us to identify some areas with more clearly fluorescence, also visible to the naked eye, that were the first to be collected. The accurate inspection led us to perform approximately 300 samplings on the clothes. In one of these areas (called 31-2) located on the underpants, the results of the sampling showed the presence of alleles unrelated to the victim. As a result, an extensive sampling through the application of a virtual grid was undertaken in this area to confirm and improve the male profile and obtain serological information. Due to the complete absence of other relevant clues on the perpetrator, when a full male profile -Unknown Male #1 (UM#1)- was found on the victim’s clothes, a huge mass screening that involved the collection and analysis of over 16,000 reference samples was carried out, until a full match was obtain.
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When studying unknown human remains, the estimation of skeletal sex and ancestry is paramount to create the victim’s biological profile and attempt identification. In this paper, a multidisciplinary approach to infer the sex and... more
When studying unknown human remains, the estimation of skeletal sex and ancestry is paramount to create the victim’s biological profile and attempt identification. In this paper, a multidisciplinary approach to infer the sex and biogeographical ancestry of different skeletons, using physical methods and routine forensic markers, is explored. Forensic investigators, thus, encounter two main issues: (1) the use of markers such as STRs that are not the best choice in terms of inferring biogeographical ancestry but are routine forensic markers to identify a person, and (2) the concordance of the physical and molecular results. In addition, a comparison of physical/molecular and then antemortem data (of a subset of individuals that are identified during our research) was evaluated. Antemortem data was particularly beneficial to evaluate the accuracy rates of the biological profiles produced by anthropologists and classification rates obtained by molecular experts using autosomal genetic ...
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The biogeographical ancestry (BGA) of a trace or a person/skeleton refers to the component of ethnicity, constituted of biological and cultural elements, that is biologically determined. Nowadays, many individuals are interested in... more
The biogeographical ancestry (BGA) of a trace or a person/skeleton refers to the component of ethnicity, constituted of biological and cultural elements, that is biologically determined. Nowadays, many individuals are interested in exploring their genealogy, and the capability to distinguish biogeographic information about population groups and subgroups via DNA analysis plays an essential role in several fields such as in forensics. In fact, for investigative and intelligence purposes, it is beneficial to inference the biogeographical origins of perpetrators of crimes or victims of unsolved cold cases when no reference profile from perpetrators or database hits for comparative purposes are available. Current approaches for biogeographical ancestry estimation using SNPs data are usually based on PCA and Structure software. The present study provides an alternative method that involves multivariate data analysis and machine learning strategies to evaluate BGA discriminating power of ...
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The identification of the earliest dogs is challenging because of the absence and/or mosaic pattern of morphological diagnostic features in the initial phases of the domestication process. Furthermore, the natural occurrence of some of... more
The identification of the earliest dogs is challenging because of the absence and/or mosaic pattern of morphological diagnostic features in the initial phases of the domestication process. Furthermore, the natural occurrence of some of these characters in Late Pleistocene wolf populations and the time it took from the onset of traits related to domestication to their prevalence remain indefinite. For these reasons, the spatiotemporal context of the early domestication of dogs is hotly debated. Our combined molecular and morphological analyses of fossil canid remains from the sites of Grotta Paglicci and Grotta Romanelli, in southern Italy, attest of the presence of dogs at least 14,000 calibrated years before present. This unambiguously documents one of the earliest occurrence of domesticates in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe and in the Mediterranean. The genetic affinity between the Palaeolithic dogs from southern Italy and contemporaneous ones found in Germany also suggest that ...
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It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae Culture (GAC) would be... more
It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae Culture (GAC) would be descended from Eastern ancestors, likely representing the Yamnaya Culture. However, nuclear (six individuals typed for 597 573 SNPs) and mitochondrial (11 complete sequences) DNAs from the GAC appear closer to those of earlier Neolithic groups than to the DNAs of all other populations related with the Pontic steppe migration. Explicit comparisons of alternative demographic models via Approximate Bayesian Computation confirmed this pattern. These results are not in contrast with Late Neolithic gene flow from the Pontic steppes into Central Europe. However, they add nuance to this model, showing that the eastern affinities of the GAC in the archaeological record reflect cultural influences from other groups from the East, rather than the movement of people.
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Research Interests: Genetics, Geography, Medical Anthropology, Population Genetics, Biology, and 12 moreBronze Age Archaeology, Medicine, Thracian Archaeology, Mitochondrial DNA, Early Bronze Age Archaeology, Thracians, Ancient DNA, Ancient human migrations, Ancient Human Remains, Anthropology of Religion, Ancient DNA of Human Populations, and Ancient genomics
In 1993, a fossil hominin skeleton was discovered in the karst caves of Lamalunga, near Altamura, in southern Italy. Despite the fact that this specimen represents one of the most extraordinary hominin specimens ever found in Europe, for... more
In 1993, a fossil hominin skeleton was discovered in the karst caves of Lamalunga, near Altamura, in southern Italy. Despite the fact that this specimen represents one of the most extraordinary hominin specimens ever found in Europe, for the last two decades our knowledge of it has been based purely on the documented on-site observations. Recently, the retrieval from the cave of a fragment of bone (part of the right scapula) allowed the first dating of the individual, the quantitative analysis of a diagnostic morphological feature, and a preliminary paleogenetic characterization of this hominin skeleton from Altamura. Overall, the results concur in indicating that it belongs to the hypodigm of Homo neanderthalensis, with some phenetic peculiarities that appear consistent with a chronology ranging from 172 ± 15 ka to 130.1 ± 1.9 ka. Thus, the skeleton from Altamura represents the most ancient Neanderthal from which endogenous DNA has ever been extracted.
Research Interests: Ancient History, Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Archaeology, Anthropology, and 15 moreHuman Evolution, Geometric Morphometrics, Ancient DNA Research, Medicine, Italy, DNA, Neandertals, Neanderthals, Fossils, Animals, Ancient DNA, Cave and Karst Studies, Caves, Base Sequence, and Molecular Sequence Data
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Ancient human remains have the potential to explain a great deal about the prehistory of humankind. Due to recent technological and bioinformatics advances, their study, at the palaeogenomic level, can provide important information about... more
Ancient human remains have the potential to explain a great deal about the prehistory of humankind. Due to recent technological and bioinformatics advances, their study, at the palaeogenomic level, can provide important information about population dynamics, culture changes, and the lifestyles of our ancestors. In this study, mitochondrial and nuclear genome data obtained from human bone remains associated with the Neolithic Globular Amphorae culture, which were recovered in the Megalithic barrow of Kierzkowo (Poland), were reanalysed to gain insight into the social organisation and use of the archaeological site and to provide information at the individual level. We were able to successfully estimate the minimum number of individuals, sex, kin relationships, and phenotypic traits of the buried individuals, despite the low level of preservation of the bone samples and the intricate taphonomic conditions. In addition, the evaluation of damage patterns allowed us to highlight the pres...
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Research Interests: Archaeology and Geology
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One of the major challenges of molecular biology in anthropological analysis is the identification via DNA typing of bone or teeth samples that can be collected from archaeological site in order to investigate kinship relationships. Due... more
One of the major challenges of molecular biology in anthropological analysis is the identification via DNA typing of bone or teeth samples that can be collected from archaeological site in order to investigate kinship relationships. Due to the difficulties of isolating and analysing DNA from such samples, several efforts have been made to solve these problems, but less work has been conducted to identify the proper type of bone samples for the DNA analysis. Therefore, following the promising results obtained from the DNA analysis of petrous bones by different groups of researchers, for the first time, here we investigated the possibility of using petrous bones as skeletal elements useful for short tandem repeat (STR) typing via capillary electrophoresis technique in ancient bone samples. In order to compare the results from petrous bone, femur and tooth samples, a total of 39 skeletal elements were collected from 13 different individuals excavated from Italian archaeological sites, ...
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Given the paucity of archaeogenetic data available for medieval European populations in comparison to other historical periods, the genetic landscape of this age appears as a puzzle of dispersed, small, known pieces. In particular,... more
Given the paucity of archaeogenetic data available for medieval European populations in comparison to other historical periods, the genetic landscape of this age appears as a puzzle of dispersed, small, known pieces. In particular, Southeastern Europe has been scarcely investigated to date. In this paper, we report the study of mitochondrial DNA in 10th century AD human samples from Capidava necropolis, located in Dobruja (Southeastern Romania, Southeastern Europe). This geographical region is particularly interesting because of the extensive population flux following diverse migration routes, and the complex interactions between distinct population groups during the medieval period. We successfully amplified and typed the mitochondrial control region of 10 individuals. For five of them, we also reconstructed the complete mitochondrial genomes using hybridization-based DNA capture combined with Next Generation Sequencing. We have portrayed the genetic structure of the Capidava medie...
Research Interests: Genetics, Archaeology, Population Genetics, Migration, Principal Component Analysis, and 15 moreMedieval Archaeology, Multidisciplinary, Phylogeny, Mitochondrial DNA, Humans, Paleogenetics, Haplotypes, Dobrogea, PLoS one, Medieval graves, Dobrudja, European Continental Ancestry Group, Genetic Analysis, Bone and Bones, and Capidava
It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the Early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae culture (GAC) would be... more
It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the Early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae culture (GAC) would be descended from Eastern ancestors, likely representing the Yamnaya culture. However, nuclear (six individuals typed for 597 573 SNPs) and mitochondrial (11 complete sequences) DNA from the GAC appear closer to those of earlier Neolithic groups than to the DNA of all other populations related to the Pontic steppe migration. Explicit comparisons of alternative demographic models via approximate Bayesian computation confirmed this pattern. These results are not in contrast to Late Neolithic gene flow from the Pontic steppes into Central Europe. However, they add nuance to this model, showing that the eastern affinities of the GAC in the archaeological record reflect cultural influences from other groups from the East, rather than the movement of people.
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Rapid and progressive advances in molecular biology techniques and the advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) have opened new possibilities for analyses also in the identification of entomological matrixes. Insects and other... more
Rapid and progressive advances in molecular biology techniques and the advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) have opened new possibilities for analyses also in the identification of entomological matrixes. Insects and other arthropods are widespread in nature and those found at a crime scene can provide a useful contribution to forensic investigations. Entomological evidence is used by experts to define the postmortem interval (PMI), which is essentially based on morphological recognition of the insect and an estimation of its insect life cycle stage. However, molecular genotyping methods can also provide an important support for forensic entomological investigations when the identification of species or human genetic material is required. This case study concerns a collection of insects found in the house of a woman who died from unknown causes. Initially the insects were identified morphologically as belonging to the Pediculidae family, and then, human DNA was extracted and analyzed from their gastrointestinal tract. The application of the latest generation forensic DNA assays, such as the Quantifiler(®) Trio DNA Quantification Kit and the HID-Ion AmpliSeq™ Identity Panel (Applied Biosystems(®)), individuated the presence of human DNA in the samples and determined the genetic profile.