Perini Nicoletta, Mercuri Fulvio, Orlanducci Silvia, Thaller Maria Cristina, Migliore Luciana
Department of Biology, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy.
Department of Industrial Engineering, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy.
Front Microbiol. 2020 Dec 21;11:598945. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.598945. eCollection 2020.
Ancient parchments record an immense part of our cultural heritage, having been used as the main written support material for centuries. Parchment easily undergoes biodeterioration, whose main signs are the so-called , which often lead to detachment of the superficial written layer. Up to recent years, several studies have been analyzing damaged parchments from different world's archives, trying to trace back the culprit of the purple spots. However, standard cultivation and early molecular techniques have been demonstrated to be unsuccessful, leading the parchment damage issue remaining unsolved for many years. Nowadays, some studies have explored the parchment biodeterioration dynamics by adopting a multidisciplinary approach combining standard microbiological methods with high-throughput molecular, chemical and physical techniques. This approach allowed an unprecedented level of knowledge on the complex dynamics of parchment biodeterioration. This mini review discusses the application of the combination of basic and high-throughput techniques to study historical parchments, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. In particular, it focuses on how metagenomics has been paramount for the unequivocal identification of the microbial main actors of parchment biodeterioration and their dynamics, but also on how metagenomics may suffer the distortion inflict by the historical perspective on the analysis of ancient specimens. As a whole, this mini review aims to describe the of information on parchment biodeterioration obtained so far by using the integration of metagenomic with recent chemical (Raman spectroscopy) and physical (Light Transmission Analysis) approaches, which might have key implications in the preservation of many ancient documents.
古代羊皮纸记录了我们文化遗产的很大一部分，几个世纪以来一直被用作主要的书写载体材料。羊皮纸很容易发生生物降解，其主要迹象就是所谓的紫斑，这常常导致表面书写层脱落。直到近年来，多项研究一直在分析来自世界各地档案馆的受损羊皮纸，试图找出紫斑的罪魁祸首。然而，标准培养和早期分子技术已被证明并不成功，导致羊皮纸损坏问题多年来一直未得到解决。如今，一些研究通过采用多学科方法，将标准微生物学方法与高通量分子、化学和物理技术相结合，探索了羊皮纸生物降解的动态过程。这种方法使人们对羊皮纸生物降解的复杂动态有了前所未有的了解。这篇小型综述讨论了基础技术和高通量技术相结合在研究历史羊皮纸上的应用，突出了这种方法的优缺点。特别是，它重点关注了宏基因组学如何对于明确鉴定羊皮纸生物降解的主要微生物及其动态至关重要，同时也关注宏基因组学在分析古代标本时如何可能受到历史视角造成的扭曲影响。总体而言，这篇小型综述旨在描述通过将宏基因组学与最近的化学（拉曼光谱）和物理（光透射分析）方法相结合，到目前为止所获得的关于羊皮纸生物降解的信息，这可能对许多古代文献的保存具有关键意义。
