Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating human diet and the oral microbiome in ancient and living Pacific Northwest Coast indigenous communities

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Several significant periods in human biological and cultural evolution have been correlated with changes in diet. The oral microbiome, communities of bacteria living in the human mouth, can also be influenced by individual diet and may be another indication of how human evolution has been shaped by dietary transitions. This project examines the link between human diet and the oral microbiome by collaborating with an indigenous community who have lived along the Northwest Coast of North America for over 6,000 years. This collaboration will allow the researchers to reconstruct the oral microbiome of an ancient community adapted to a predominantly marine diet, and assess how significant social and cultural transitions associated with dietary changes, such as European colonization, may have influenced the oral microbiome. The research will inform our understanding of the relationship between human evolutionary history and modern human experiences, such as the health disparities documented in many indigenous communities of North America. This project will also incorporate community-based projects like the development of an Ancestor "House" room to respectfully store indigenous human remains awaiting laboratory analysis. This project draws on both Western science research methods and indigenous community knowledge and oral history. The researchers will first reconstruct the diet and oral microbiome of the ancestral indigenous community using a combination of cutting edge ancient DNA sequencing methods, stable isotope analysis, and oral history. Prior to European contact, this ancient community underwent a period of increasing social complexity, transitioning to villages with large, stratified, lineage-based, multigenerational households, which likely controlled local food resources. In non-egalitarian communities like this, there are often individual status differences. This research will assess how increased status differentiation and social complexity influenced individual diet and access to food resources, and how the bacteria in the oral cavity responded to these changes. The diet and oral microbiome of this ancient community will then be compared to similar data from the living descendant community to assess how their current diet may be different from that of their ancestors, as a result of European colonization and the introduction of Western industrialized processed foods, and to understand if this change has influenced the bacterial composition of the oral microbiome. This research will provide a novel approach to understanding the biological consequences of European colonization.