A squad of scientist has announced that they can now determine the sex of a human skeleton from a single tooth , by looking at trace of protein .
Published in theJournal of Archaeological Science , the study lead by the University of California , Davis used mass spectrometry – looking at the various chemicals in a sample distribution – to analyze proteins in tooth .
In particular , they looked at thegenes of amelogenin protein . Females have amelogenin - ex genes , while Male have both amelogenin - X and Y.
The research worker hit the books 40 tooth enamel samples from 25 individuals , which included both adults and kid , go steady back 100 to 7,300 years from site in North America and Peru , alongside some modern teeth . In all the sample distribution they found amelogenin - ex , while only about half had amelogenin - Y , advise they were male .
One issue was that a tooth that had no amelogenin - Y could be a false negative if there was simply too little of the Y gene to detect . So the squad used a statistical method acting to work out out if it could be a off-key negative based on how much amelogenin - X was present .
Normally the biologic sexual practice of human remains is determined by front at feature in bones that are different in males and females , such as the pelvis . But these changes are n’t evident in children , while an uncompleted skeletal frame can make function out the sex activity hard .
The other option is desoxyribonucleic acid grounds , but this is expensive and hard , and requires infertile conditions . But tooth , which are often found at archaeologic situation , could extend a novel way to work out out the sex of a skeleton – alongside other interesting piece of info .
" Wear patterns on the tooth can say us about diet,”saidJelmer Eerkens from the UCDavis , a co - source on the study . He added that plaque can reveal the bacteria in a person ’s mouth , radiocarbon geological dating can reveal the historic period of the someone , and isotope data can show their cause .
The team said measuring the amount of amelogenin in tooth could be used alongside live methods to more accurately determine a skeleton ’s biological sexual activity . And it also highlight just how authoritative teeth are to archaeologist in working out the history of human remains .
