Paleogenomic Analysis of Dental Calculus to Detect Tuberculosis and Syphilis in a Historic Documented Collection

Assess the utility of dental calculus as a diagnostically informative substrate. In conjunction with paleopathological analysis, calculus samples from 39 individuals in the Smithsonian Institution Robert J. Terry Collection with CoDs of either syphilis or tuberculosis were assessed via shotgun metagenomic sequencing for the presence of Treponema pallidum and Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, MTBC, DNA. The authenticity of MTBC DNA was further confirmed using targeted quantitative PCR assays, MTBC genome enrichment, and bioinformatic simulations. Our study highlights the utility of calculus for molecular detection of tuberculosis in the archaeological record and underscores the effect of museum preparation techniques and extensive handling on pathogen DNA preservation in skeletal collections.