Madupe Palesa P, Koenig Claire, Patramanis Ioannis, Rüther Patrick L, Hlazo Nomawethu, Mackie Meaghan, Tawane Mirriam, Krueger Johanna, Taurozzi Alberto J, Troché Gaudry, Kibii Job, Pickering Robyn, Dickinson Marc R, Sahle Yonatan, Kgotleng Dipuo, Musiba Charles, Manthi Fredrick, Bell Liam, DuPlessis Michelle, Gilbert Catherine, Zipfel Bernhard, Kuderna Lukas F K, Lizano Esther, Welker Frido, Kyriakidou Pelagia, Cox Jürgen, Mollereau Catherine, Tokarski Caroline, Blackburn Jonathan, Ramos-Madrigal Jazmín, Marques-Bonet Tomas, Penkman Kirsty, Zanolli Clément, Schroeder Lauren, Racimo Fernando, Olsen Jesper V, Ackermann Rebecca R, Cappellini Enrico
Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI), University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Science. 2025 May 29;388(6750):969-973. doi: 10.1126/science.adt9539.
is a morphologically well-documented Early Pleistocene hominin species from southern Africa with no genetic evidence reported so far. In this work, we describe the mass spectrometric sequencing of enamel peptides from four ~2 million-year-old dental specimens attributed morphologically to from the site of Swartkrans in South Africa. The identification of AMELY-specific peptides enabled us to assign two specimens to male individuals, whereas semiquantitative mass spectrometric data analysis attributed the other two to females. A single amino acid polymorphism and the enamel-dentine junction shape variation indicated potential subgroups present within southern African . This study demonstrates how palaeoproteomics can help distinguish sexual dimorphism from other sources of variation in African Early Pleistocene hominins.
是一种来自非洲南部的更新世早期古人类物种，其形态学记录良好，但迄今为止尚无遗传证据报道。在这项工作中，我们描述了来自南非斯瓦特克朗斯遗址的四个约200万年前牙齿标本的牙釉质肽的质谱测序，这些标本在形态上被归类为 。AMELY特异性肽的鉴定使我们能够将两个标本归为雄性个体，而半定量质谱数据分析则将另外两个归为雌性。一个单氨基酸多态性和牙釉质-牙本质交界处形状变异表明非洲南部 内存在潜在的亚群。这项研究展示了古蛋白质组学如何有助于区分非洲更新世早期古人类中性别二态性与其他变异来源。
