The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

Compositional properties and provenance of Hellenistic pottery from the necropolis of Issa with evidences on the cross-Adriatic and the Mediterranean-scale trade

Excavations of Hellenistic necropolises in ancient Issa located on the island of Vis in coastal Croatia revealed significant amounts of pottery, mostly tableware, dated from the second half of the 4th to the 1st c. BCE. Recovered pottery contained different stylistic forms thought to have been produced locally or imported. The goal of this study was to report on technological and compositional aspects of pottery economics embedded in the frame of social development of Issaean society. For this purpose, a set of 42 samples was analysed by X-ray diffractometry, polarization and electron microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and automated electron microscopy. The results of archeometric inquiry combined with stylistic traits showed most of the vessels were produced locally whereby the procurement of raw material was dependent on the local occurrences of Terra Rossa. This required a high level of manufacture organisation, defining Issa as a presumably wellestablished Hellenistic city already in the second half of the 4th c. BCE. At the time the city maintained a strong exchange with the Italian South as suggested by excavated red figure and Gnathia pottery characterized by the superior production technologically compared to local imitations. A rare example of recovered amphoriskoi and their distinct material characteristics provided a strong indication of the presence of Levantine pottery in Issaean graves which, until now, has not been attested in the Eastern Adriatic. Such a finding speaks of the involvement of Issa in the Late Hellenistic networks of economic and cultural seaborne connectivity between the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean and introduces Issa as a far-flung market of, at the time popular Levantine luxury products

cDNA structure and expression of calpactin, a peptide involved in Ca2(+)-dependent cell aggregation in sponges.

Aggregation of cells of the marine sponge Geodia cydonium is mediated by an aggregation factor (AF) particle of Mr 1.3 X 10(8). It is now reported that the AF particle is associated with calpactin, which was ascribed a role in the cell-adhesion process. In order to identify the sequence similarity to other members of the lipocortin family, the cDNA of sponge calpactin was cloned and found to display an 80% sequence similarity to vertebrate calpactin II but only a 47% similarity to calpactin I. The calpactin gene, which contains the consensus sequence coding for the amino acids G-T-D-E, was expressed in Escherichia coli and subsequently purified to a 37000-Mr polypeptide. Both the p32 and the p37 are provided with approximately two Ca2+ ions/molecule and the property to bind to phospholipids. The dissociation constant (calpactin-Ca2+) was in the absence of phospholipids in the range 500-700 microM-Ca2+ but in their presence about 20-30 microM-Ca2+. On the basis of (i) inhibition studies with antibodies to calelectrin and (ii) competition experiments with soluble phospholipids (both chemically defined as well as total homologous membrane lipids) we conclude that the AF-associated calpactin and plasma-membrane-bound phospholipid(s) are involved in cell-cell aggregation in sponges