BOLZANO, ITALY, June 23 (DC Times Online) — Researchers at Eurac Research say a peer-reviewed study in the journal Microbiome has identified four cold-adapted yeast species on Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy kept at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.
The team said the yeasts were found in skin samples, meltwater inside the mummy and stomach contents. By reconstructing the organisms’ genetics, the researchers said they recovered four viable strains, and that three could use phenol, a compound used to prevent fungal growth, as a food source.
The authors described Ötzi’s remains as a “dynamic biological interface” in which ancient glacier-derived microbes and modern contaminants can coexist under museum conditions. They also reported degraded and modern DNA fragments, which they said may fit with a long-running theory that the body thawed and refroze several times before its discovery.
The researchers said some microbes may have been introduced during the 1991 discovery and later preservation of the mummy. The museum says Ötzi was found in the Alps near the Austria-Italy border and was naturally preserved in ice.
Radiocarbon dating places Ötzi to around 3300 BC, making him Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy. The South Tyrol museum says the body is kept in a sub-zero vault designed to mimic glacial conditions.
