DNA Sequencing in Cultural Heritage
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Updated: Mar 15, 2026

Rare Event Detection Using Error-corrected DNA and RNA Sequencing
Published on: August 3, 2018
Stefania Vai1, Martina Lari2, David Caramelli2
1Department of Biology, University of Florence, Via del Proconsolo 12, 50122, Florence, Italy. stefania.vai@unifi.it.
Abstract:
During the last three decades, DNA analysis on degraded samples revealed itself as an important research tool in anthropology, archaeozoology, molecular evolution, and population genetics. Application on topics such as determination of species origin of prehistoric and historic objects, individual identification of famous personalities, characterization of particular samples important for historical, archeological, or evolutionary reconstructions, confers to the paleogenetics an important role also for the enhancement of cultural heritage. A really fast improvement in methodologies in recent years led to a revolution that permitted recovering even complete genomes from highly degraded samples with the possibility to go back in time 400,000 years for samples from temperate regions and 700,000 years for permafrozen remains and to analyze even more recent material that has been subjected to hard biochemical treatments. Here we propose a review on the different methodological approaches used so far for the molecular analysis of degraded samples and their application on some case studies.
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