DNA Preserved in Lice Glue Reveals South American Mummies’ Secrets

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The mummified man of the Ansilta culture, from the Andes of San Juan, Argentina, had cement in his hair which preserved his own genes.

Anyone who has ever peered through a magnifying glass and struggled to pick nits knows how hard female head lice work to build their eggs to a human hair. These pests are difficult to remove once they gain a foothold. Scientists have found louse eggs stuck to ancient hair after 10,000 years.

Researchers have discovered that the glue used to adhere eggs to hair is even more remarkable. A team of invertebrate biologists, led by Alejandra Perotti, discovered that cement made from lice can be very good at trapping and preserving anything. Their study was a case of imitating art. The scene was similar to the one in the movie, in which mosquitoes sucked dinosaur blood and then sealed it in amber.

The ancient humans who became mummies in Argentina's Andes Mountains were 1,500 to 2,000 years old. The skin cells were trapped in the cement. The ancient inhabitants came from the rainforests in southern Venezuela and Colombia, according to the genomes that Perotti and colleagues have analyzed. They found that the glue was kept at a high quality similar to what would be found from teeth, and that it was superior to other common sources like the skull. Even if the remains of the human host have been lost, ancient hair, clothes and other textiles could still yield priceless DNA that can be used to identify them.

If you have hair or clothing, you can find nits, according to Perotti. We can study thousands of years of the hosts and their evolution by looking at the DNA trapped in the cement.

The method Perotti and colleagues have used allows scientists to study DNA in ancient human remains without causing cultural concerns.

Team members from five different universities are studying mummies in South America to learn more about the region. Two mummies yielding lice were buried in the Calingasta Caves and rock shelters of the high Andes Mountains of San Juan province in Central West Argentina. The mummies were preserved along with the tchoparasites that shared their lives in the region where the valleys soar to heights of nearly 10,000 feet.

The sheath of cement that was used to glue each nit to a strand of hair on the mummies was suspected to have DNA. They found out that the nucleus of human cells were in fact trapped in the louse cement by using a dye that binding to DNA. Then they took the tube and put it in the sample container.

The mummies and people who lived in Amazonia 2,000 years ago have the same genetics. The Ansilta culture, the mountain inhabitants of the area, had come from the rainforest regions of southern Venezuela and Colombia. In Argentina, where many indigenous groups were eradicated, assimilated or deported centuries ago, it is difficult to recreate South American prehistory.

The team analyzed the nits themselves and compared them to other louse populations to confirm their findings. The parasites had a similar migration history to their human hosts.

Perotti says that all the nits they analyzed gave the same origin. That was fascinating. It gave us the same evolutionary history as the host.

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A human hair has a nit attached to it. The University of Reading.

The team found sources of environmental DNA that were not human or louse. They found the earliest evidence of Polymaviruses along with various strains ofbacteria. The researchers theorize that head lice might play a role in the spread of the virus, which can cause skin cancer.

The nits were examined for information about their hosts. The position of the nits on the mummies' hair suggested that the ancient humans were exposed to extreme cold temperatures which may have caused their deaths.

David Reed is a Biologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History who was not involved with the study. The authors were able to sequence the genome from a small starting material, and second, the lice on these heads contributed to our understanding of human migrations.

Our ancestors lived with lice for millions of years. Scientists are only now looking into the genomes of the parasites to understand how they spread and evolved.

Reed says that human lice have taught them a lot about our history, from contact with archaic hominids to when humans started wearing clothing. It seems that there is more to say about our history.

Many ancient groups supported large populations of both head and clothing lice, which can still be found among their remains and artifacts of many types. South Americans used specialized combs to try and rid themselves of pests. Today's scientists were lucky that those efforts failed.

There are lots of hair, textiles and clothing in the museums and private collections. Many of the archaeological materials are gathered generations ago from unknown sites and are not related to any particular place or time. The nits that endure on these artifacts even after their human hosts have died are now a new resource for learning more about their ancient owners.

nits are preserved for thousands of years attached to hair or clothing, and that's the beauty of gathering info from them. We can link them to a specific person.

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