Samantha Presslee

Assessing the best screening methods for the selection of palaeontological bone samples for proteomic analysis

Samantha Presslee§, Kirsty Penkman§, Matthew Collins£, Ross MacPhee#

§University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD; £ University of Copenhagen, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen; # American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York City, New York, 2100

Amino acid racemisation has been used for decades to analyse protein preservation in fossils and its most common application in palaeontology today is the dating of closed system fossils, such as eggshell, shell and enamel. However, AAR can still provide important proteomic information about open system fossils, such as bone. In this study, 24 different bone samples of varying ages, locations and backgrounds were analysed using AAR and LC-MS/MS. The results were compared to assess whether AAR could be used as a screening technique before further, more costly, proteomic analysis. Both amino acid concentration and % glycine content were shown to be good indicators of protein (namely collagen) survival, while racemisation can be used to give information about possible contaminants, both modern and bacterial. AAR was also compared to other screening techniques (FTIR and MALDI-ToF MS) and it was shown to provide as much as, if not more, information regarding protein survival.