Some new clues appeared and can be described as the world's oldest murder case: Glacier "Iceman", whose 5300-year-old body was found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991. "We have been studying the Iceman for 20 years. We know a lot about Jesus and the places he lived, how he died, but we understand very little about his genetic information that he carried," he told BBC News. "This is very exciting, I think it's just the beginning of a longer-term study at this level. We also want to learn more from this data, which we have just started analyzing."
He carries a "haplotype" that suggests his ancestors most likely came from the Middle East during a migration period when farming became more widespread. This could indicate that the glacier was lactose intolerant during the transition into an agricultural society. Professor Zink said that the next generation "is becoming" sequencing technology has made this analysis possible. "Whole genome sequencing allows you to get the entire DNA sequence of a sample in a way that was impossible before."
The full genome of the glacier has now been published in Nature Communications. The results show: he had brown eyes, "O" blood type, lactose intolerance, and was prone to heart disease. They also show that he was the first recorded case of infection by Lyme disease bacteria. Analysis of the abnormal mitochondrial DNA of the Iceman also revealed that he was more closely related to modern residents of Corsica than to Sardinian populations in the Alps, where he was uncovered.
"These are very exciting results that enrich our genetic map of the cell nucleus of the glacier," stated a source referring to the nuclear DNA, which is generally less well-preserved than mitochondrial DNA, the "power plant" of the cell, which also contains DNA.
A reconstruction showing what the glacier might have looked like before he was struck by an arrow was based on mitochondrial DNA of the Iceman, which provided some hints about his origins when it was fully sequenced in 2008. Albert Zink, from the Eurac Mummy and Iceman Institute in Bolzano, Italy, said that the nuclear DNA study represents a huge leap forward in the broadest scientific research on this specimen.
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