Frozen mummy’s genetic blueprints unveiled
Thursday, 15 March 2012 00:00 Editor Features – Science
BY peering deeply into the DNA of the mummy known as Ötzi, geneticists have expanded the rap sheet on the 5,300-year-old Iceman: He had brown eyes, brown hair and blood type O, was lactose intolerant and his modern-day relatives live on Corsica and Sardinia.
These vital statistics and more come from an analysis of the Tyrolean man’s complete genetic blueprints, reported online February 28 in Nature Communications. The DNA analysis also found that the Iceman, found frozen and well preserved in the Alps in 1991, carried genetic risk factors for heart disease. And he was infected with the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, making him the oldest known case of the disease.
For the new study, researchers led by Albert Zink, an anthropologist at the European Academy of Bolzano in Italy, removed a bit of Ötzi’s hip bone and extracted DNA from the sample. The mummy’s fresh-frozen state helped preserve his DNA, making deciphering a complete set of genetic blueprints easier than for most ancient samples, says Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen. “It is much better DNA than you can get from one dry old bone,” he says.
Ötzi’s brown eyes and lactose intolerance are evidence that scientists are right about the pace of evolution of some human traits.
