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A tale of textiles: Genetic characterization of historical paper mulberry barkcloth from Oceania
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 15, Iss 5, p e0233113 (2020), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2020.
-
Abstract
- Humans introduced paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) from Taiwan into the Pacific over 5000 years ago as a fiber source to make barkcloth textiles that were, and still are, important cultural artifacts throughout the Pacific. We have used B. papyrifera, a species closely associated to humans, as a proxy to understand the human settlement of the Pacific Islands. We report the first genetic analysis of paper mulberry textiles from historical and archaeological contexts (200 to 50 years before present) and compare our results with genetic data obtained from contemporary and herbarium paper mulberry samples. Following stringent ancient DNA protocols, we extracted DNA from 13 barkcloth textiles. We confirmed that the fiber source is paper mulberry in nine of the 13 textiles studied using the nuclear ITS-1 marker and by statistical estimates. We detected high genetic diversity in historical Pacific paper mulberry barkcloth with a set of ten microsatellites, showing new alleles and specific genetic patterns. These genetic signatures allow tracing connections to plants from the Asian homeland, Near and Remote Oceania, establishing links not observed previously (using the same genetic tools) in extant plants or herbaria samples. These results show that historic barkcloth textiles are cultural materials amenable to genetic analysis to reveal human history and that these artifacts may harbor evidence of greater genetic diversity in Pacific B. papyrifera in the past.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
Topography
Research Facilities
Genotyping Techniques
Remote Oceania
Gene Identification and Analysis
Plant Science
Museum Collections
Plant Genetics
Biochemistry
01 natural sciences
Microsatellite Loci
Geographical Locations
DNA extraction
Islands
Multidisciplinary
Ancient DNA
biology
Textiles
Nucleic acids
Geography
Medicine
Microsatellite
Research Article
Science
Oceania
Taiwan
Pacific Islands
010603 evolutionary biology
03 medical and health sciences
Extraction techniques
Gene Types
Genetics
Humans
Landforms
Genetic diversity
Biology and life sciences
Paper mulberry
Paleontology
Geomorphology
DNA
Broussonetia
biology.organism_classification
Archaeology
Research and analysis methods
Phylogeography
030104 developmental biology
Herbarium
People and Places
Earth Sciences
Paleogenetics
Microsatellite Repeats
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 15
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLOS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....4a7f8fae4ae0cf6176f69891cca9db76