3 highly relevant projects within ancient genomics and proteomics at GLOBE institute UCPH. You will be part of a the European training network on:
The Organic Chemistry and Molecular Biology of Archaeological Artefacts:
The individual project titles
ESR3: Ancient DNA analysis of tars and resins associated with artefacts (Copenhagen/York)
ESR5: Blood from Stone: Utilizing novel extraction techniques for the removal of tightly bound molecules from mineral surfaces (Copenhagen/York)
ESR10: Genetic evidence for artefacts associated with prehistoric wine (Copenhagen/York)
Fast track to details on ESR5:
I am co-supervisor here and you will get a chance to work with video rate AFM.
Fellowship 2 (ESR5): Blood from Stone: utilizing novel extraction techniques for the removal of tightly bound molecules from mineral surfaces (Copenhagen/York)
Project description
The interaction between organic matter and mineral surfaces is critical to the preservation of biomolecules associated with artefacts yet this process is poorly understood. This is particularly relevant to more polar compounds such as organic acids and proteins that are notoriously difficult to extract and characterise. Proteins are known to persist when sorbed to archaeological mineral artefacts, but their low concentration (1) and difficulty of removal (2) has meant that they have been largely overlooked. You will optimise methods for the combined extraction of a diverse range of compounds from ceramics and evaluate the potential of other mineral artefacts for binding organic molecules. You will then apply optimized extraction protocol to archaeological artefacts generated across the network.
Research group
The fellow will join the Collins research group in the Section for Evolutionary Genomics at the GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen. The Collins group focuses on the recovery of protein sequences from ancient samples, in order to explore the production of use of material culture. The group offers well found labs for the analysis of ancient proteins with access to state of the art computing.
Principal supervisor: Professor Matthew Collins, University of Copenhagen
Co-supervisors: Associate Professor Karina Sand (University of Copenhagen) and Dr Jessica Hendy (University of York)
Secondment opportunity: Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas FORTH (Crete)
Start date: 1 October 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter
Duration: 3 years (36 months)