#36 · Genomics

Validating ancient DNA and ancient human inference tools against their known limits

The dominant thread is scrutiny of what current inference tools can reliably support in ancient DNA and ancient human remains. A simulation study of sedimentary ancient DNA finds that multi-contributor samples impair kinship inference and proposes a heterozygosity test to flag them. AncientMetagenomeDir adds standardised dating to more than 700 ancient microbial datasets and finds inconsistent radiocarbon reporting. An assessment of current ancient human epigenetic clocks finds age-at-death estimation particularly challenging for adults. Separately, a published study reports that small-scale archaic mitochondrial insertions alter nuclear genome function in modern humans, extending introgression analysis beyond sequence-level comparison. This last item is methodologically distinct from the validation studies; the shared element is evaluation of inference limits rather than a common technique.