We make a French/English conference where I deal with the French part. Time is 15:15 to 15:45 and the set of conferences takes place at the “Auditorium de la Grande Galerie”, MNHN (Paris).

Here is a copy of the schedule of the afternoon.

Frédéric Léwino from french journal Le Point discusses the reasons and conditions of this restitution in a witty report.
you can also read a short report on francetv.info with some footage of the restitution ceremony.

Learn more about this lecture in the Teaching section.

Here is the teaser of the documentary:

You can watch it in full in streaming following this link to Capcanal.

The film was also part of the selection of the 20th festival of Archeological film held in Rovereto, Italy on 3-8 october 2011.

With the rise of the second generation techniques of sequencing, the illusion has spread that the sequence data produced in the field of paleogenetics/paleogenomics would soon become error-free. It has repeatedly been claimed that the new methods available were more « performant » than their predecessors to overcome the inherent difficulties tied to ancient DNA. More than the techniques themselves, one must acknowledge that the fantastic sequencing depth they allow, largely improves our potential to decipher both contamination and post-mortem chemical alteration in our sequences.

However, the new techniques have also been accompanied with new recurrent types or sequencing errors (like homopolymer length) and with average levels of sequencing errors at the individual nucleotide level much higher than observed with « old-fashioned » capillary Sanger sequencing. Furthermore, the availability of huge sequence datasets has led to a serious behavioral shift for the end-user to which individual sequence-read analysis have been replaced with mass-statistic validation, more and more remote from the actual nucleotidic sequence produced.

No paleogenomic case-study of the actual quality of the sequencing data comparing the final « consensus » assemblage based on different sequencing techniques has been performed to date. In order to address this topic, all available Pleistocene mammoth mitogenomes have been analyzed. The dataset of over 25 mammoth mitogenomes provides indeed a unique paleogenomic framework, where different amplification and sequencing strategies were used, encompassing Sanger capillary sequencing, 454 sequencing, Illumina sequencing, and a blend of these techniques in certain cases.

Based on an analysis at the individual nucleotide level, a systematic review of the quality of those genomes is proposed, and pinpoints the drastic effect of sequencing coverage . It surveys (I) point variation errors and false polymorphism, (II) homopolymer stretches length, (III) potential chimeras due to contamination of libraries/extracts, (IV) errors in sequence assembly.  The results of phylogenetic analyses and molecular clock dating are compared pre- and post- removal of the putative errors.

In case you’d experience issues with vizualizing this video, check it out directly from Neopodia.

Antibiotic resistance is ancient.
D’Costa Vanessa, Christine E. King, Lindsay Kalan, Mariya Morar, Wilson W.L. Sung, Carsten Schwarz, Duane Froese, Grant Zazula, Fabrice Calmels, Régis Debruyne, Brian G. Golding, Hendrik N. Poinar, Gerard D. Wright.
Nature 2011, 477(7365):457-461.
DOI: 10.1038/nature10388

Abstract

The discovery of antibiotics more than 70 years ago initiated a period of drug innovation and implementation in human and animal health and agriculture. These discoveries were tempered in all cases by the emergence of resistant microbes. This history has been interpreted to mean that antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria is a modern phenomenon; this view is reinforced by the fact that collections of microbes that predate the antibiotic era are highly susceptible to antibiotics. Here we report targeted metagenomic analyses of rigorously authenticated ancient DNA from 30,000-year-old Beringian permafrost sediments and the identification of a highly diverse collection of genes encoding resistance to β-lactam, tetracycline and glycopeptide antibiotics. Structure and function studies on the complete vancomycin resistance element VanA confirmed its similarity to modern variants. These results show conclusively that antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon that predates the modern selective pressure of clinical antibiotic use.

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