Had the fantastic opportunity to present at #ICP2026 in Stockholm last week, talking about one of our projects looking at human DNA in sediments. Thanks @palaeogenomics.bsky.social!
Niall Cooke
@niallcooke.bsky.social
Ancient geneticist. Working as a postdoctoral researcher with MPI-EVA, Leipzig. Formerly of Trinity College Dublin. Big in Japan. You may know me from my appearance on a Spanish travel show segment on the "Irish Breakfast".
So happy and proud to see this paper out in @natcomms.nature.com today! We show that traces of human DNA can persist on cave walls for thousands of years. Absolutely fantastic work by the wonderful Alba Bossoms Mesa at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and a great team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Investigating ancient human DNA preservation on cave walls and in rock art - Nature Communications
Ancient DNA can be preserved on materials from archaeological floor deposits such as bones, sediments and artifacts. Here, the authors investigate whether Palaeolithic wall art can preserve human DNA ...
nature.com
Our late Neandertal paper is officially out! 💀❤️🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... It was years in the making, a tremendous feat spearheaded by our PhD student Alba Bossoms Mesa and co-led by @janetk.bsky.social and @benmpeter.bsky.social
nature.com
A highlight of the Leipzig running calendar every year! www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...
Success at the 2026 Leipzig Firmenlauf
On 17 June, colleagues from across MPI-EVA joined more than 22,000 participants in one of Leipzig’s biggest company running events, achieving strong results in the team rankings
eva.mpg.de
Are you interested in human DNA from ancient sediments? Do you want to do a PhD in Vienna? We have two open positions in our group! You can learn more and apply here (scroll down to the very bottom, ours are the last two listings): careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...
Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution
The Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution is dedicated to educating students to advance our understanding of the ecology and evolution of extant and ancestral organisms, populations, and communities. In Ecology, the focus is on uncovering the mechanistic and evolutionary drivers of patterns and processes across biological scales, from gene regulation to ecosystem structure and function, including the role of communities in biogeochemical cycles and their adaptive responses to environmental change. In Evolution, we investigate the processes shaping changes in organization and dynamics of organisms, populations, and species at molecular, developmental, morphological, and physiological levels.
careers.univie.ac.at
I am very excited to present this work to the (sed)aDNA community - and I am looking forward to some cool applications! If you want to use quicksand, I recommend following supplementary section 8, which demonstrates several use-cases :) see github.com/mpieva/quicksand for more details
GitHub - mpieva/quicksand: A pipeline for the analysis of sedimentary ancient mtDNA.
A pipeline for the analysis of sedimentary ancient mtDNA. - mpieva/quicksand
github.com
Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · 10mo ago@merszym.bsky.social @janetk.bsky.social et al. develop quicksand, an open-source Nextflow pipeline designed for rapid and accurate taxonomic classification of mammalian mitochondrial DNA in sedimentary ancient DNA samples. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf305 #evobio #molbio #compbio #aDNA
Also check out the dispatch by Shigeki Nakagome: www.cell.com/current-biol..., and (of course) our new preprint on the genome of a 200,000 year old Denisovan www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Human evolution: Tracing ancient journeys through Denisovan DNA
Variation in Denisovan ancestry across East Asia reflects complex demography and multiple introgression waves. A new study reports that the Jomon population, early diverged ancient hunter-gatherers…
cell.com
In a new paper led by Jiaqi Yang we trace the distribution of Denisovan introgressed DNA in ancient modern human genomes over time. www.cell.com/current-biol...
An early East Asian lineage with unexpectedly low Denisovan ancestry
Yang et al. study Denisovan ancestry in ancient and present-day humans. In contrast to other East Asians, genomic comparisons suggest that the Jomon derived most of their ancestry from a deep lineage ...
cell.com
A large-scale genomic study in Science of over 1500 individuals from 139 underrepresented Indigenous groups across northern Eurasia and the Americas sheds new light on the ancient migrations that shaped the genetic landscape of North and South America. Learn more: scim.ag/4mi1yUf
From North Asia to South America: Tracing the longest human migration through genomic sequencing
Genome sequencing of 1537 individuals from 139 ethnic groups reveals the genetic characteristics of understudied populations in North Asia and South America. Our analysis demonstrates that West Siberi...
scim.ag
PhD positions available! Join our lab at Trinity College Dublin to work on ancient human and pathogen genomics: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
Out today in @sciencemagazine, we've journeyed into our shared history with Neandertals by analyzing over 300 present-day and ancient modern humans, including 59 individuals who lived between 2,000 and 45,000 years ago. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Neanderthal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans
Gene flow from Neanderthals has shaped genetic and phenotypic variation in modern humans. We generated a catalog of Neanderthal ancestry segments in more than 300 genomes spanning the past 50,000 year...
science.org
I am very happy to share our new paper on the genetics of some of the first modern humans who ever lived in Europe! We sequenced nuclear DNA from 13 specimens from Ranis in Germany, and found that they belonged to at least 6 individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)
Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture - Nature
Nature - Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture
nature.com
In this comment piece with James Fellows Yates and Christina Warinner (@christinawarinner.bsky.social), we highlight the mounting problems with data archiving and metadata reporting in ancient DNA research. The field cannot afford to keep neglecting this issue. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Ancient DNA data hold insights into past organisms and ecosystems — handle them with more care
DNA recovered from ancient remains is transforming our understanding of organisms and ecosystems from tens, thousands and even millions of years ago – but the growing volume of data must be better pre...
nature.com