The findings could reshape our understanding of ancient food production and microbial fermentation practices in early civilizations.
The ability to sequence the bacterial genes from the ancient kefir cheese allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary journey of probiotic bacteria over the past 3,600 years.For the first time, scientists have successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from ancient cheese samples discovered alongside the 3,600-year-old Tarim Basin mummies in China.
This groundbreaking research provides new insights into the origins of kefir cheese, a fermented dairy product, and offers valuable information on the evolution of probiotic bacteria. “We found an independent diffusion route of an East Asian branch of strains from Xinjiang to inland East Asia.
Now, thanks to significant advancements in ancient DNA analysis, a team led by researcher Yuanyuan Fu has solved the mystery. They successfully extracted mitochondrial DNA from samples found in three tombs, identifying cow and goat DNA. Interestingly, the Xiaohe people used milk from different animals in separate batches—a contrast to the mixed-milk cheesemaking practices common in the Middle East and Greece.
“I designed specific probes to capture the genomes of Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens from ancient cheese samples aged 3500 years ago. After obtaining the data through sequencing, we conducted a lot of bioinformatics and genetic analysis, e.g. phylogenetic relationship analysis of Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, comparative analysis of the functional profiles of the ancient and modern Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens,” Fu told IE.
Crucially, Fu and her colleagues recovered microbial DNA from the dairy samples, confirming that the white substances were kefir cheese. The samples contained bacteria and fungi, such asgenes from the ancient kefir cheese allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary journey of probiotic bacteria over the past 3,600 years. Specifically, the team compared ancientstrains are divided into two main groups: one from Russia and another from Tibet.
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