Increasing sustainability in palaeoproteomics by optimizing digestion times for large-scale archaeological bone analyses

Le Meillour, L., Sinet-Mathiot, V., Diljá Ásmundsdóttir, R., Hansen, J., Mylopotamitaki, D., Troché, G., Xia, H., Herrera Bethencourt, J., Ruebens, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5621-5786, Smith, G. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7155-5140, Fagernäs, Z. and Welker, F. (2024) Increasing sustainability in palaeoproteomics by optimizing digestion times for large-scale archaeological bone analyses. iScience, 27 (4). 109432. ISSN 2589-0042 doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109432

Abstract/Summary

Palaeoproteomic analysis of skeletal proteomes is used to provide taxonomic identifications for an increasing number of archaeological specimens. The success rate depends on a range of taphonomic factors and differences in the extraction protocols employed. By analyzing 12 archaeological bone specimens from two archaeological sites, we demonstrate that reducing digestion duration from 18 to 3 hours has no measurable impact on the obtained taxonomic identifications. Peptide marker recovery, COL1 sequence coverage, or proteome complexity are also not significantly impacted. Although we observe minor differences in sequence coverage and glutamine deamidation, these are not consistent across our dataset. A 6-fold reduction in digestion time reduces electricity consumption, and therefore CO2 emission intensities. We furthermore demonstrate that working in 96-well plates further reduces electricity consumption by 60%, in comparison to individual microtubes. Reducing digestion time therefore has no impact on the taxonomic identifications, while reducing the environmental impact of palaeoproteomic projects.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/116056
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.isci.2024.109432
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Department of Archaeology
Publisher	Elsevier
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