Monat: Juli 2023

Publications

Ghost admixture in eastern gorillas.

Pawar, H., Rymbekova, A., Cuadros-Espinoza, S., Huang, X., de Manuel, M., van der Valk, T., Lobon, I., Alvarez-Estape, M., Haber, M., Dolgova, O., Han, S., Esteller-Cucala, P., Juan, D., Ayub, Q., Bautista, R., Kelley, J.L., Cornejo, O.E., Lao, O., Andrés, A.M., Guschanski, K., Ssebide, B., Cranfield, M., Tyler-Smith, C., Xue, Y., Prado-Martinez, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Kuhlwilm, M., 2023. Ghost admixture in eastern gorillas. Nature Ecology & Evolution. read more

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News

HEAS Seed Grants for June 2023 announced

HEAS Head Gerhard Weber today announced funding for three grants for HEAS member under the HEAS Seed Grant scheme. The successful applicants were: Applicant Project Amount Granted Susanna Sawyer, Pere Gelabert, Mareike Stahlschmidt Tissue source determination of ancient DNA in sediment €3.000,00 Laura van der Sluis, Georg Tiefengraber Early Bronze Age clothing bone pins from the Natural History Museum archive €3.000,00 Tom Higham, Emese Végh HUMEVCOL – Human Evolution Beyond Collagen €2.955,47 For more information about the HEAS Seed Grant scheme see here

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Publications

Where are the Roman women of Ovilava? A spatio-temporal approach to interpret the female deficit at the eastern Roman cemetery (Gräberfeld Ost) of Ovilava, Austria

Hagmann, D., Ankerl, B., Greisinger, M., Miglbauer, R., Kirchengast, S., 2023. Where are the Roman women of Ovilava? A spatio-temporal approach to interpret the female deficit at the eastern Roman cemetery (Gräberfeld Ost) of Ovilava, Austria. Anthropological Review 86, 89-118. read more

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News Allgemein

New publication on deep learning for population genetics by HEAS member Xin Huang and others

  The journal Nature Reviews Genetics published today a comprehensive review on how deep learning techniques are used in the context of population genetics, such as tasks for inferring demographic histories, identifying population structure and investigating natural selection from high-throughput sequencing data. With increasingly large-scale datasets on genetic diversity, especially for modern and ancient humans, technologies from deep learning are becoming more and more popular for studying evolutionary biology. An overview on this highly dynamic interdisciplinary field is presented in this publication, providing guidelines and discussing future directions. HEAS members Xin Huang and Martin Kuhlwilm led this work, with contributions from HEAS member Aigerim Rymbekova, as well as collaborators in Spain. Click here for more

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Gene flow from an extinct population in gorillas uncovered by HEAS member Martin Kuhlwilm and team

A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has discovered gene flow from a previously-unknown extinct gorilla population into eastern gorillas. This result shows that our close relatives experienced an evolutionary history similar to modern humans, who have received gene flow from extinct hominins like Neandertals. In this study, advanced statistical methods including those that use neural networks were used to computationally excavate the signature of a now-extinct gorilla population that contributed to both mountain gorillas and the closely related eastern lowland gorilla subspecies, who live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Up to 3% of the genome of present-day eastern gorillas carries remnants from this ghost population, which separated from the common ancestor of all gorillas more than 3 million years ago. The study was led by HEAS researcher Martin Kuhlwilm and his collaborators Harvinder Pawar and Prof. Tomas Marques-Bonet at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC, Barcelona), with contributions from HEAS members Aigerim Rymbekova, Xin Huang and Sojung Han, as well as an international team. The publication can be found here: Ghost admixture in eastern gorillas. - HEAS Read more Das genetische Erbe unserer ausgestorbenen Ahnen (univie.ac.at) Press Coverage https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000180861/geisterpopulation-im-erbgut-von-gorillas-aufgespuert https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000180861/geisterpopulation-im-erbgut-von-gorillas-aufgespuert?ref=rss https://www.krone.at/3071687 https://www.sn.at/panorama/wissen/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich-142716559 https://www.kleinezeitung.at/service/newsticker/chronik/6310429/Gorillas-tragen-DNA-von-ausgestorbenen-Verwandten-in-sich https://www.puls24.at/news/chronik/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich/303700 https://www.vienna.at/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich/8209804 https://www.noen.at/in-ausland/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich-378466000 https://www.vol.at/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich/8209804 https://www.bvz.at/in-ausland/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich-378466000 https://k.at/news/gorillas-tragen-dna-von-ausgestorbenen-verwandten-in-sich/402538409 https://www.vbio.de/aktuelles/details/das-genetische-erbe-unserer-ausgestorbenen-ahnen https://www.myscience.at/news/2023/das_genetische_erbe_unserer_ausgestorbenen_ahnen-2023-univie https://www.drei.at/de/planet-drei/news/aktuell/story.html?uuid=73e3b90c-6ffe-43ba-a821-ad840760807a https://science.apa.at/power-search/7164475450544787115 https://science.apa.at/power-search/6378096686257573758 https://phys.org/news/2023-07-gene-extinct-gorilla-population-eastern.html https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/genetic-heritage-from-a-ghost-population-376914 https://www.miragenews.com/genetic-heritage-of-our-extinct-ancestors-1056006/ https://todayschronic.com/gene-flow-from-an-extinct-gorilla-population-to-eastern-gorillas-discovered/#respond

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HEAS Member interviewed for Nature

HEAS Member Meriam Guellil was recently interviewed for  a Nature feature on the study of the role of ancient microbes in understanding the evolution of past infectious diseases. Read article here: Germs, genes and soil: tales of pathogens past (nature.com) Related article: Ancient tooth DNA reveals how ‘cold sore’ herpes virus has evolved (nature.com)

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Pecha Kucha

HEAS Pecha Kucha

What is a Pecha Kucha? The PechaKucha 20x20 presentation format is a slide show of 20 images, each auto-advancing after 20 seconds. It’s non-stop and you've got 400 seconds to tell your story, with visuals guiding the way. PechaKucha was created in Japan in 2003 by renowned architects, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. The word “PechaKucha” is Japanese for “chit chat.” The HEAS Pecha Kucha series is a bi- monthly online meeting of HEAS members. Here are the talks which have taken place so far: Name Topic Doris Nagel MIS 3 Gerhard Weber Why Neanderthals are not essentially a European story Karl Kunst Bones - the other Pots? Peter Steier C-14 from the more technical side Martin Fieder Behavior genetics of social status and group behavior Martin Kuhlwilm Admixture in genomes - how to find it and what it means Michael Doneus Landscape archaeology at the interface between natural science and humanities. Sylvia Kirchengast, Dominik Hagmann The Bioarchaeology of Ovilava/Wels (AUT): Osteoarchaeological and spatio-temporal analysis of Roman and Early Medieval burials from the ‚Gräberfeld Ost‘ Thomas Higham The chronology of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic: reliable radiocarbon dating using compound specific approaches Alexandra Krenn-Leeb People, their Habitat and Environment from the Neolithic Period to the Bronze Age Harald Wilfing The role of human ecology and old bones.  Synergies or only incompatibilities. Immo Trinks Geophysical archaeological prospection Maria Ivanova-Bieg Pioneer farmers and…

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HEAS Member awarded FWF Grant

Congratulations to HEAS Member Elmira Mohandesan on being awarded a standalone FWF grant for her project titled "Genome-wide Genetic Diversity, Ancestry and Inbreeding in New Zealand Feral Kaimanawa Horses". This grant will also support a PhD Candidate.   More information and application details here

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“Archäologie am Berg”. Public Weekend of Archaeology in Hallstatt in September.

The Natural History Museum Vienna and the Salzwelten Hallstatt invite you to their annual public weekend of archeology on the mountain in Hallstatt:   When: Saturday, September 16 and Sunday, September 17, 2023, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m Location: Around the "Alte Schmiede", the branch of the NHM in Hallstatt The latest results of archaeologists and their related disciplines relating to archeology on the Salzberg are presented at around 15 stands. See the attached program for details. Arch am Berg September 2023_Einladung+Programm_DIGITAL

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Department of Evolutionary Anthropology (DEA) Members Allgemein

Susanna SAWYER

Susanna is a Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. She completed her PhD under Svante Pääbo on genomic insights into Denisovans and Neandertals of Denisova Cave. She joined the department in 2018 and has focused on a wide range of ancient DNA questions. She is particularly interested in ancient epigenetics and the effect of maternal behavior on methylation signals during gestation in ancient human populations. In 2023 she will begin a new project on human ancient DNA analyses from sediments.

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Department of Evolutionary Anthropology (DEA) Members

Michelle HÄMMERLE

I am a PhD student at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. After a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Medicine, I completed the master's program in Evolutionary Anthropology here in Vienna. My research interests focus on ancient host and pathogen DNA and I work with both great apes and humans. For my master’s thesis, I investigated DNA viruses in great apes, where I am still doing more research. My PhD project deals with social genomics in underprivileged individuals from Northern Italy, where I will incorporate different datasets, including archaeological and osteological data, to get an insight into the living conditions of the populations studied.

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