Ancient DNA Laboratory

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Facts & Details: 

The Ancient DNA Laboratory was established by the Graduate School Human "Development in Landscapes" and the Medical Faculty of Kiel University in 2008. The ancient DNA (aDNA) work is currently carried out at the Institute of Legal Medicine (all pre-PCR steps including capture) and the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (all post-amplification procedures including next generation sequencing (NGS) and data analysis).

analysis of an ancient skullThe application of NGS in combination with highly sensitive target enrichment methods allows us to reconstruct and analyse whole genomes from various organisms that died centuries or millennia ago. We perform PCR- and NGS-based investigations of mitochondrial/nuclear polymorphic markers and genomes (or parts thereof) retrieved from bacterial, animal and human remains.

The questions we address range from sexing and kinship analysis to population genetics and evolutionary studies of infectious and inflammatory diseases. With funds from the State of Schleswig-Holstein, a new, state-of-the-art aDNA facility is being built that will expand the range of the analytical toolkit and research potential even further.