This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A Université de Montréal–led research team has analyzed the genetic origins of human remains found in Old Montreal—and uncovered unexpected results. "Some historical accounts suggest that during the colonial period, there was considerable mixing between the settlers and Indigenous peoples," said Isabelle Ribot, a bioarchaeologist and professor in UdeM's Department of Anthropology.
"We hoped to demonstrate this by analyzing colonial cemeteries." In her career, Ribot initially focused her research on southern Africa, but for more than 15 years she has been supervising student projects in Quebec's St. Her former doctoral student Diane Martin-Moya, now an adjunct professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), analyzed the DNA of 45 individuals from Montreal's Notre-Dame Cemetery, a burial ground dating back to New France. Martin-Moya continued the research during a postdoctoral fellowship, and the findings have now been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is the first time ancient DNA has been sequenced in Quebec," Martin-Moya said. "It took a lot of coordination." The project was carried out in collaboration with the TRACES laboratory at UQTR, the Montreal Heart Institute and McGill University. Notre-Dame Cemetery was the burial ground of Notre-Dame parish, where Notre-Dame Basilica now stands.
It was in use from 1683 to 1796. Excavations carried out from the 1990s to 2013 during renovation of the square in front of the basilica unearthed the remains of about 200 individuals, which the City of Montreal loaned to Université de Montréal. Analyses of dental morphology, isotopic composition and other characteristics were performed on the remains.
"We thought it would be interesting to go further and use the DNA to assess the biological diversity of the individuals," Ribot said. The team sampled 60 skull bones and 33 associated teeth from a total of 45 individuals. "We used the cochlea, which is extracted from the temporal bone, because it's the part least exposed to the environment and therefore least likely to be contaminated," Martin-Moya explained.
"We also used the teeth for ethical reasons, since this avoids the need to make incisions in the skull." The samples are ground into powder and the DNA is extracted. The DNA sequences are then reconstructed, using bioinformatics to fill in the gaps between the collected fragments. Finally, the data are analyzed statistically and compared with global population databases to identify markers linked to geographic regions.
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