MUNICH, GERMANY—According to a Science News report, four species of ancient yeast have been identified among the microbiome on the mummified remains of a man known as Ötzi the Iceman. Albert Zink of Ludwig Maximilian University said that the 5,300-year-old mummified person is kept in a special facility in Italy that mimics the glacial conditions where the body was discovered in the Alps on the border of Italy and Austria in 1991. To collect the microbiome samples, the researchers slightly thawed the remains, collected the runoff, and swabbed several places on the body. For comparison, they also analyzed soil collected at the site where Ötzi was discovered, the air in the museum, and the water used to keep his storage area humid. Samples taken from the inside of Ötzi’s body did not grow when cultured, but four different yeasts were identified in the samples taken from the body’s surface. “We also found ancient DNA from these species, which proves that they persisted in Ötzi and accompanied him over thousands of years while he was preserved in the ice,” Zink said. He and his colleagues think the yeast might have grown on the remains during warmer seasons over the first 1,500 years after Ötzi’s death. The study also determined that these yeasts could cause decomposition if the remains are not kept frozen. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Microbiome. For more on Ötzi, go to "What Ailed the Iceman?"
