Lipidomic Analysis of Arch Street Project Brain Tissue

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bones and Burials in Philadelphia: The Arch Street Project’s Multidisciplinary Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Arch Street Project provided desiccated brain tissue recovered from a cemetery uncovered in Philadelphia, PA to the DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine Metabolomics Unit. As the Arch Street cemetery burials predate chemical fixation funerary practices, analysis of biological soft tissue samples was possible.

This study examines the potential of lipid analysis of soft tissue remnants in buried remains, and archaeological excavations by presenting evidence of long-term lipid preservation in unfixed brain tissue 200 years postmortem. With further analysis, the identification of signaling lipids and/or disease biomarkers provides broad implications for epidemiological studies of past and present populations.

High-resolution mass spectrometry was used to explore and identify the presence of different lipid molecules present in the brain tissue, which can indicate molecular activity and provide information regarding cellular signaling cascades active during life. Forty separate lipids were observed in significant quantities. Two known phospholipids found in large quantities within cell membranes were identified and validated via MS2 after bombarding each molecule with high energy electrons. With analysis of more brain tissue that predates chemical fixation, lipid degradation patterns may shed light on post-mortem interval estimation techniques as well as provide insight to the pathologies present in these remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bones and Burials in Philadelphia: The Arch Street Project’s Multidisciplinary Research   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25994