
Ancient DNA is offering clues to puzzle of Dead Sea scrolls, say experts - diodorus
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/02/ancient-dna-helps-experts-tackle-puzzle-of-dead-sea-scrolls
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dcdanko
Here's the paper for anyone interested
[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30552-3#.Xt...](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)30552-3#.XtZj7CuS9w8.twitter)

I'm one of the middle-authors on this. Happy to try and answer questions.

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programmarchy
Could estimate the % of fragments that are currently unplaced? I’m curious to
know how much structure has been pieced together so far and what remains.

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dcdanko
Most of the fragments (sorry don't have a %) could be mapped to a genome. In
cases where a fragment could not be mapped it's more likely because of
degradation than novel biology.

That said we did identify some novel microbial genomes. Not clear if they are
actually ancient though vs contamination in the last 100 years or so.

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programmarchy
I think you’re referring to DNA fragments but I actually meant text fragments.
Do you know how much of the text is recovered at this point? Trying to get a
sense of whether or not the full text of the scrolls is able to be read at
this point or if there’s more to piece together.

If I understand correctly, you have a bunch of pieces of scrolls and it’s kind
of like piecing a shredded document back together. By analyzing the DNA
material of the scroll fragments, you can tell which ones should be grouped
together, to help put the puzzle back together so to speak.

Is that right? Or are you mainly analyzing the DNA to find out other
information about the scrolls, like where and when they may have originated?

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dcdanko
You have the right idea. In some cases the Dead Sea Scrolls were literally
shredded- ripped up into small pieces that were sold individually to tourists.

The goal here was to identify parchment fragments that came from the same
animal so the original (unshredded) document could be reconstructed.

While we were able to link a lot of parchment fragments we didn't go so far as
to actually reconstruct the text on those fragments. While we constrained that
task somewhat it's still nontrivial since we don't know what order the
fragments should go in, if there are still missing pieces, etc.

