Grant to help uncover indigenous origins

Griffith professor funded for cutting-edge ancient DNA research The Australian Research Council (ARC) awarded a discovery grant for cutting-edge DNA research that could reveal the origins and even physical appearance of the first Australians. Dr David Lambert, professor of evolutionary biology at Griffith University and a world authority on ancient DNA, received the $217,000, three-year grant. He will lead a team of international scientists as they study the genetic material of human remains up to 40,000 years old. The remains were recovered from the Willandra area of New South Wales and are kept at Australian National University (ANU). It’s the first time someone has tried to extract their DNA since 2001. If successful, Lambert’s team will provide new evidence of when people first came to Australia and from where. “There’s a lot of missing pieces,” Lambert told Campus Review. “We don’t know exactly, truthfully, how people got to Australia.” Current accepted thinking is that modern human ancestors migrated from Africa about 60,000 years ago, reaching Australia about 45,000 years ago via the southern route. “What that means is that they got here very fast, and interestingly there were quite sophisticated social systems in Australia before people were in Europe,” said Lambert. “So this is a very ancient society [and] understanding more about it isn’t just important for all Australians, but for our understanding of those kinds of global issues.” The work ahead, however, is painstaking, and the results not guaranteed. Lambert explained much of the material he would remove from the more than 100 human samples at ANU would belong to microorganisms, requiring a sorting of the “wheat from the chaff” to identify the human elements. Additionally, because the remains were so old and were discovered in a hot environment, he expected the DNA strands he did find to be short and very degraded. From these, Lambert must sequence the puzzle back together and compare the results to several complete human genomes from around the world. “Technically challenging is the best way to describe it … It’s not straightforward to do, but the gains are potentially huge,” he said. Previously, scientists have identified two very distinct groups of early Australians, known as robust and gracile types. Both groups are represented in the remains, and another of Lambert’s research goals is to settle a debate about whether they represent two sets of people who migrated to Australia at different times, or are males and females. “That’s the immediate thing we have to answer,” he said. He also hopes to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms, variations in DNA sequences that have been linked to certain physical characteristics, such as skin and hair colour. “We can potentially put together some of the information about what the First Australians looked like, and I think that would be something that every Australian would be interested in,” said Lambert. Until recent months, when the entire human genome of a 6000-year-old man was cracked from a clump of hair buried in Greenland, DNA sequencing has used samples from living people. But Lambert was “quite confident” that technological advances that had come to market as recently as the past six months would help him succeed. “We’re going to try like hell to achieve this,” he said. The project is being conducted in partnership with tribal elders from Willandra, who have placed no conditions on the research. “There’s a certain amount of concern – quite rightly, ..,” said Lambert. He said the worry was largely a legacy of approaches taken by US researchers in the 1970s and 80s.