Ancient DNA Lab Maps Little-Explored Human Lineages

Press release from Emory University:

By Carol Clark
Photos by Stephen Nowland

Emory junior Rosseirys "Ro" De La Rosa is helping analyze DNA that she extracted from ancient bones unearthed in Uruguay — the remains of an Indigenous people known as the Charrúa. “Very few remains of the Charrúa have been found,” De La Rosa says. “They were largely wiped out by colonialism and a lot of mystery surrounds them. Anything that we can learn is important.”

It may be possible to connect the ancient Charrúa to modern-day populations unaware of their link. “Culture matters,” De La Rosa says. “Leaning about your own culture gives you a sense of unity and connection that you can pass down to others.”

Ro De La Rosa in the anteroom of the Emory ancient DNA lab last January. This semester, from her family home in Massachusetts, she's writing computer code needed for the analysis of the DNA she extracted and prepared early in the spring semester.

Ro De La Rosa in the anteroom of the Emory ancient DNA lab last January. This semester, from her family home in Massachusetts, she's writing computer code needed for the analysis of the DNA she extracted and prepared early in the spring semester.

Graduate student Yemko Pryor is assisting on a project involving the ancient people of Peru. She’s comparing the genetics of populations from the coast to those from high in the Andes. “We’re looking for changes in genes that may have allowed people to adapt to living in extreme high altitude,” Pryor explains. “Any variances in genes related to lung function, for instance, may give us a new insight into human evolution.”

Meanwhile, Pryor is also developing a passion project for her PhD in Emory’s Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Program. “There is a large gap in knowledge and representation in genetic datasets for people of African ancestry in the Americas,” she says. “I’m working to change that. I want to explore how the history of racism and oppression, beginning with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, may have affected peoples’ physiologies.”

De La Rosa and Pryor are members of the Lindo Ancient DNA Laboratory, headed by John Lindo, Emory assistant professor of anthropology. The state-of-the-art facility, funded by major grants from National Geographic Explorer and the National Science Foundation, opened in January in Emory’s Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences Building. It is one of a handful of ancient DNA labs in the country and one of the few in the world involved in every step of the complex process of solving mysteries surrounding ancient remains.

“We build projects from the ground up,” Lindo says. “We extract DNA from ancient remains here, sequence it here, analyze it here, and publish the results.”

This press release was produced by Emory University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.