"We've been studying the Iceman for 20 years. We know so much about Jesus' places of residence, his manner of death, BOPP film, but very little about the genetic information he carried," he told BBC News. "This is very exciting, and I think it's just the beginning of a longer phase of research. We also want to learn more from this data that we have just started to analyze."
The full genome of the glacier man has now been published in Nature Communications. The results show: he had brown eyes, "O" blood type, lactose intolerance, and was predisposed to heart disease. They also show that he was the first recorded case of infection by Lyme disease bacteria. Analysis of the abnormal ice man series of DNA 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 the genetic map of the cell nucleus of the glacier man. The nuclear DNA, which is generally preserved less well than mitochondrial DNA, the 'power plants' of the cell, which also contain DNA.
He carries a 'haplotype' indicating that his ancestors most likely came from a migration out of the Middle East as agricultural practices became more widespread. This could explain why the glacier man was lactose intolerant during the transition to an agricultural society," Professor Zink said.
Next-generation sequencing technology 'is becoming possible' for such analyses. "Whole genome sequencing allows you to get the entire DNA sequence of a sample in a way that was impossible before."
Some new clues have also emerged that can be described as the world's oldest murder case: the glacier 'Iceman', whose 5,300-year-old body was discovered frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.
A reconstruction shows what the glacier man might have looked like before the arrow felled him. Mitochondrial DNA from the glacier man has provided some hints at his origins when it was fully sequenced in 2008. Albert Zink, from the Eurac Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, said that the study of nuclear DNA represents a huge leap forward in the broadest scientific investigation of the specimen.
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