TY - JOUR
T1 - Genomic analysis of the blood attributed to Louis XVI (1754-1793), king of France
AU - Olalde, Iñigo
AU - Sánchez-Quinto, Federico
AU - Datta, Debayan
AU - Marigorta, Urko M.
AU - Chiang, Charleston W K
AU - Rodríguez, Juan Antonio
AU - Fernández-Callejo, Marcos
AU - González, Irene
AU - Montfort, Magda
AU - Matas-Lalueza, Laura
AU - Civit, Sergi
AU - Luiselli, Donata
AU - Charlier, Philippe
AU - Pettener, Davide
AU - Ramírez, Oscar
AU - Navarro, Arcadi
AU - Himmelbauer, Heinz
AU - Marquès-Bonet, Tomàs
AU - Lalueza-Fox, Carles
N1 - Funding Information:
We are indebted to the owners of the gourd for allowing access to the blood sample inside it and to John Novembre for advice and assistance with the ancestry analysis. This work is supported by FEDER and Spanish Government grants BFU2012-38236 and the Spanish Multiple Sclerosis Netowrk (REEM) of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RD12/0032/0011) to A.N., BFU2011-28549 and ERC Starting Grant (260372) to T.M.-B. and BFU2012-34157 to C.L.-F. and S.C., and a predoctoral fellowship from the Basque Government (DEUI) to I.O.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - A pyrographically decorated gourd, dated to the French Revolution period, has been alleged to contain a handkerchief dipped into the blood of the French king Louis XVI (1754-1793) after his beheading but recent analyses of living males from two Bourbon branches cast doubts on its authenticity. We sequenced the complete genome of the DNA contained in the gourd at low coverage (∼2.5×) with coding sequences enriched at a higher ∼7.3× coverage. We found that the ancestry of the gourd's genome does not seem compatible with Louis XVI's known ancestry. From a functional perspective, we did not find an excess of alleles contributing to height despite being described as the tallest person in Court. In addition, the eye colour prediction supported brown eyes, while Louis XVI had blue eyes. This is the first draft genome generated from a person who lived in a recent historical period; however, our results suggest that this sample may not correspond to the alleged king.
AB - A pyrographically decorated gourd, dated to the French Revolution period, has been alleged to contain a handkerchief dipped into the blood of the French king Louis XVI (1754-1793) after his beheading but recent analyses of living males from two Bourbon branches cast doubts on its authenticity. We sequenced the complete genome of the DNA contained in the gourd at low coverage (∼2.5×) with coding sequences enriched at a higher ∼7.3× coverage. We found that the ancestry of the gourd's genome does not seem compatible with Louis XVI's known ancestry. From a functional perspective, we did not find an excess of alleles contributing to height despite being described as the tallest person in Court. In addition, the eye colour prediction supported brown eyes, while Louis XVI had blue eyes. This is the first draft genome generated from a person who lived in a recent historical period; however, our results suggest that this sample may not correspond to the alleged king.
U2 - 10.1038/srep04666
DO - 10.1038/srep04666
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 24763138
AN - SCOPUS:84899490957
VL - 4
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
M1 - 4666
ER -