Brains preserved for hundreds of years can contain intact proteins Alexandra Morton-Hayward
It is now possible to obtain proteins from preserved soft tissues like brains. The new method could reveal details of human history and prehistory, and of evolutionary history, that were previously impossible to know. That includes what animals ate, the microbes they had in their guts and even how human brain cells changed over evolutionary time.
“There are soft tissues preserved over half a billion years of Earth history,” says at the University of Oxford. Such tissues could now be mined for proteins. “The amount…
