Palaeoproteomics Laboratories

These facilities support the analysis of ancient proteins from diverse archaeological remains, including bone, dental calculus (mineralised tooth tartar), and ceramic and tool residues. The laboratories include state-of-the-art clean-rooms, with separate areas for subsampling and protein extractions. Our laboratories follow protocols proven to reduce contamination, including use of dedicated clean-room clothing and equipment, separation of archaeological and modern samples and extraction steps, and employment of dead air hoods dedicated to different stages of sampling and extraction. The laboratory employs temperature-controlled incubators for sample digestion under different conditions.

Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis is currently undertaken at the Functional Genomics Centre in Zurich. Data analysis is conducted on dedicated servers with access to a number of bioinformatics tools including MASCOT, Byonic, Scaffold, MaxQuant, and Geneious.

Ayushi Nayak demonstrates our archaeological dental calculus sampling protocol under clean room conditions in the Proteomics Laboratory