A minimally destructive method for determining protein preservation

One of the problems associated with tissues following death and long term storage is that the component biomolecules degrade to a greater or lesser extent. As a direct result of this degradation it is necessary to use larger specimens for analysis compared to contemporary tissues. The ever-increasing scarcity of mummified tissue, coupled with the experimental difficulties encountered when working with ancient material, has made the development of minimally destructive techniques increasingly important. We are attempting to devise such a method for determining protein preservation based around infra-red spectroscopy using histological sections or small quantities of powdered tissue. The spectra obtained are compared to protein preservation as determined through immunohistochemistry and a protein extraction method also based around the use of histological sections. This method may be valuable in further reducing the number and size of samples taken for research.