Experimental maceration of bovine bones and its effects on the bone proteome

This study is aimed at understanding how bone soft maceration procedures (e.g., soaking the bones in warm water with the aid of detergents) used to process bones for long term storage (e.g., in human osteological collections) affect the bone proteome. Three different maceration protocols have been tested in the study, in order to test different lenghts for the soaking in water, different temperatures and different detergents. Bovine tibiae (n=6, 3 left and 3 right from 3 animals) have been used in the experiment - in particular, the left ones have been used as non-macerated controls, and the right ones have been macerated with three protocols (one per protocol). Sampling was conducted on both fresh and macerated remains and used to conduct shotgun proteomics analyses.