The use of corsetry to treat Pott’s disease of the spine from 19th century Wolverhampton, England

Corsets have been used both to create a fashionable silhouette and as an orthopaedic treatment for spinal conditions, but skeletal changes associated with the use of corsetry are rarely reported on in the palaeopathological literature. Here, we report on a 19th-century adult male with Pott’s disease of the vertebral column and related vertebral compression deformities. Wolverhampton HB40 presented destruction of the vertebral bodies of T6 to L4, ankylosis of the apophyseal joints of L1 and L2 and an angular kyphosis of the lumbar region, the result of tuberculosis. The presence of flattened spinous processes and bilateral acute angulation of multiple ribs in the lower thoracic region is indicative of plastic deformation caused by the use of the corset. The presence of both of these changes in an adult male, at a time when the use of cosmetic corsets by men was in decline, suggests that the compression trauma was the result of an orthopaedic corset used to correct the defective posture resulting from tubercular kyphosis, although corset use to obtain a fashionable silhouette cannot be ruled out

Exploring Age – Transition Analysis as a Tool for Detecting the Elderly

The growth of gender archaeology has improved the inclusion of female and juvenile narratives in archaeological discourse, enabling us to better understand interactions between groups defined by both social and physiological differences. There has been a notable absence of elderly in research, however, that is not simply a question of attitudes but of methodological limitations. The emergence of biostatistics has offered novel ways to combat common issues such as age mimicry and avoid the problematic nature of culturally loaded descriptive terminology. A test performed on Transition Analysis by Boldsen et al. (2002), generates individual age estimates, which allow for better differentiation between individuals and age groups, such as the ‘45+ older adults’. Further research into biostatistical methods will not only improve objectivity but bring much needed attention to the elderly, including their narrative into the investigation of family dynamics and adult-juvenile interactions

The importance of animal baselines: using isotope analysis to compare diet in a British medieval hospital and lay population

YesThe results of carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis from two medieval populations are presented here, in a study investigating dietary habits within a medieval hospital population in England. We used δ13C and δ15N measurements of bone collagen in order to attempt to identify a distinct group diet within the medieval hospital of St. Giles, Brough, Yorkshire, and examine the reasons why the dietary habits within the institution may have been noticeably different from that of a comparative lay population. Following the results and tentative conclusions of a study conducted by Müldner and Richards (2005), it was hypothesised that religious fasting rules would result in there being evidence of greater consumption marine fish at St. Giles than at the rural township of Box Lane, Pontefract, Yorkshire. While more dietary variation was found at the hospital, it can be seen that the differences in δ13C and δ15N isotope values vary in relation to the animal baselines. Thus, differences between the human populations can be attributed to geological and environmental factors as opposed to dietary differences

Age estimation [editorial].

yesAssessing and interpreting dental and skeletal age-related changes in both the living and the dead is of interest to a wide range of disciplines (e.g. see Bittles and Collins 1986) including human biology, paediatrics, public health, palaeodemography, archaeology, palaeontology, human evolution, forensic anthropology and legal medicine. ... This special issue of Annals of Human Biology arises from the 55th annual symposium of the Society for the Study of Human Biology in association with the British Association for Biological Anthropological and Osteoarchaeology held in Oxford, UK, from 9–11 December 2014. Only a selection of the presentations are included here which encompass some of the major recent advances in age estimation from the dentition and skeleton

You are what you ate: consuming the past to benefit the present

You Are What You Ate was a British public engagement project funded by the Wellcome Trust between 2010 and 2014. It was a collaboration between the University of Leeds, the University of Bradford and Wakefield Council, especially its museums, schools and libraries, which aimed to use medieval food as a way to encourage reflection about modern food and lifestyle. The innovative project ran three exhibitions in Wakefield and Pontefract, a mobile exhibition, numerous schools and youth workshops, and a series of market stalls and osteology workshops for adults and children in the Yorkshire region. This article provides an overview of the project’s aims, activities, outcomes, including an analysis of how to evaluate them, and its legacy

Large scale gene expression meta-analysis reveals tissue-specific, sex-biased gene expression in humans

The severity and prevalence of many diseases are known to differ between the sexes. Organ specific sex-biased gene expression may underpin these and other sexually dimorphic traits. To further our understanding of sex differences in transcriptional regulation, we performed meta-analyses of sex biased gene expression in multiple human tissues. We analyzed 22 publicly available human gene expression microarray data sets including over 2500 samples from 15 different tissues and 9 different organs. Briefly, by using an inverse-variance method we determined the effect size difference of gene expression between males and females. We found the greatest sex differences in gene expression in the brain, specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex, (1818 genes), followed by the heart (375 genes), kidney (224 genes), colon (218 genes), and thyroid (163 genes). More interestingly, we found different parts of the brain with varying numbers and identity of sex-biased genes, indicating that specific cortical regions may influence sexually dimorphic traits. The majority of sex-biased genes in other tissues such as the bladder, liver, lungs, and pancreas were on the sex chromosomes or involved in sex hormone production. On average in each tissue, 32% of autosomal genes that were expressed in a sex-biased fashion contained androgen or estrogen hormone response elements. Interestingly, across all tissues, we found approximately two-thirds of autosomal genes that were sex-biased were not under direct influence of sex hormones. To our knowledge this is the largest analysis of sex-biased gene expression in human tissues to date. We identified many sex-biased genes that were not under the direct influence of sex chromosome genes or sex hormones. These may provide targets for future development of sex-specific treatments for diseases.Benjamin T. Mayne, Tina Bianco-Miotto, Sam Buckberry, James Breen, Vicki Clifton, Cheryl Shoubridge and Claire T. Robert

Large-scale manipulation of promoter DNA methylation reveals context-specific transcriptional responses and stability

BACKGROUND: Cytosine DNA methylation is widely described as a transcriptional repressive mark with the capacity to silence promoters. Epigenome engineering techniques enable direct testing of the effect of induced DNA methylation on endogenous promoters; however, the downstream effects have not yet been comprehensively assessed. RESULTS: Here, we simultaneously induce methylation at thousands of promoters in human cells using an engineered zinc finger-DNMT3A fusion protein, enabling us to test the effect of forced DNA methylation upon transcription, chromatin accessibility, histone modifications, and DNA methylation persistence after the removal of the fusion protein. We find that transcriptional responses to DNA methylation are highly context-specific, including lack of repression, as well as cases of increased gene expression, which appears to be driven by the eviction of methyl-sensitive transcriptional repressors. Furthermore, we find that some regulatory networks can override DNA methylation and that promoter methylation can cause alternative promoter usage. DNA methylation deposited at promoter and distal regulatory regions is rapidly erased after removal of the zinc finger-DNMT3A fusion protein, in a process combining passive and TET-mediated demethylation. Finally, we demonstrate that induced DNA methylation can exist simultaneously on promoter nucleosomes that possess the active histone modification H3K4me3, or DNA bound by the initiated form of RNA polymerase II. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for epigenome engineering and demonstrate that the response of promoters to DNA methylation is more complex than previously appreciated. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13059-022-02728-5

Recurrent acquisition of cytosine methyltransferases into eukaryotic retrotransposons

Transposable elements are in a constant arms race with the silencing mechanisms of their host genomes. One silencing mechanism commonly used by many eukaryotes is dependent on cytosine methylation, a covalent modification of DNA deposited by C5 cytosine methyltransferases (DNMTs). Here, we report how two distantly related eukaryotic lineages, dinoflagellates and charophytes, have independently incorporated DNMTs into the coding regions of distinct retrotransposon classes. Concomitantly, we show that dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium have evolved cytosine methylation patterns unlike any other eukaryote, with most of the genome methylated at CG dinucleotides. Finally, we demonstrate the ability of retrotransposon DNMTs to methylate CGs de novo, suggesting that retrotransposons could self-methylate retrotranscribed DNA. Together, this is an example of how retrotransposons incorporate host-derived genes involved in DNA methylation. In some cases, this event could have implications for the composition and regulation of the host epigenomic environment

‘Sons of athelings given to the earth’: Infant Mortality within Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geography

FOR 20 OR MORE YEARS early Anglo-Saxon archaeologists have believed children are underrepresented in the cemetery evidence. They conclude that excavation misses small bones, that previous attitudes to reporting overlook the very young, or that infants and children were buried elsewhere. This is all well and good, but we must be careful of oversimplifying compound social and cultural responses to childhood and infant mortality. Previous approaches have offered methodological quandaries in the face of this under-representation. However, proportionally more infants were placed in large cemeteries and sometimes in specific zones. This trend is statistically significant and is therefore unlikely to result entirely from preservation or excavation problems. Early medieval cemeteries were part of regional mortuary geographies and provided places to stage events that promoted social cohesion across kinship systems extending over tribal territories. This paper argues that patterns in early Anglo-Saxon infant burial were the result of female mobility. Many women probably travelled locally to marry in a union which reinforced existing social networks. For an expectant mother, however, the safest place to give birth was with experience women in her maternal home. Infant identities were affected by personal and legal association with their mother’s parental kindred, so when an infant died in childbirth or months and years later, it was their mother’s identity which dictated burial location. As a result, cemeteries central to tribal identities became places to bury the sons and daughters of a regional tribal aristocracy