BOLZANO, ITALY, June 23 (DC Times Online) — A peer-reviewed study in the journal Microbiome has identified four cold-adapted yeast species on Ötzi the Iceman’s remains, adding new evidence that the 5,300-year-old mummy preserves a mix of ancient glacier microbes and later contamination, researchers at Eurac Research said.
The team said the yeasts were detected in skin samples, meltwater inside the mummy and stomach contents. It also reported reconstructing the microbes’ genetics and growing multiple species in the lab, with three apparently able to use phenol, a compound used to prevent fungal growth, as a food source.
In the study, the authors described Ötzi’s body as a “dynamic biological interface” in which ancient glacier-derived microbes and modern contaminants coexist under museum conditions. They also reported degraded and modern DNA fragments and said some microbes may have been introduced when the mummy was found and preserved, while others may have persisted in the cold over thousands of years.
Ötzi was discovered in 1991 in the Alps near the Austria-Italy border and is now held in a cold cell at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where the institution says it is kept under subzero conditions that mimic glacier ice.
