The DNA of blood donors from Bologna, together with that of other volunteers recruited in Sicily , Sardinia and Corsica, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the populations living in the three main islands of the western Mediterranean .
This is what is at the basis of "Crossing the Sea" , the research project funded by the Ministry of Education and involving the Universities of Ferrara (as coordinator), of Bologna, Palermo, Florence and Cagliari . A research group from Alma Mater's Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, in particular, will sequence the entire genome of people whose grandparents are all from the same province of one of the three islands .
The DNA of the volunteers participating in the study will be compared with the ancient one , extracted and sequenced from other universities, starting from several hundred human finds covering a time scale from 20 thousand years ago to the Middle Ages. From the comparison between ancient and modern genomes it will be possible to reconstruct the biological and demographic history of the populations of the islands and the different population dynamics. Furthermore, it will be possible to explore the biological adaptations that these populations have had over the millennia in response to certain environmental conditions, the presence of endemic pathogens and the adoption of particular diets or cultural practices.
The aim of the study, therefore, is "to describe with a resolution never reached before the articulated set of processes that made possible the colonization of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica by our species and to better understand the dynamics that led to the formation of current genetic heritage of the peoples of southern Europe ", explains Marco Sazzini, who leads the research group of the University of Bologna.
(Unioneonline / vl)