Loading...
Original Publication Date
2024
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
The East Marshall Street Well in Richmond contained the commingled remains of more than 60 individuals, many of African ancestry, whose identities were lost to history. This research uses DNA sequencing to re-associate bones into complete individuals and reveal features such as ancestry, hair, and eye color, helping to restore dignity, support community remembrance, and lay these ancestors to rest.
Transcription
Next, we have Christopher Tween, using DNA to restore the identity and dignity of Richmond's ancestors, the East Marshall Street Well Project. Christopher is in the College of Humanities and Sciences, and his advisor is Dr. Tal Simmons. Imagine walking through a city, not knowing that just beneath the very ground you walk on lies a forgotten history. Now, picture the remains of over 60 individuals inside this old well mixed up together. You ask yourself, who are these people? Where were they from? And what were their stories? That is the reality of the East Marshall Street well, where the remains of over 60 individuals were discovered in Richmond, Virginia. Now, my goal in this project is to re-associate these mixed-up bones into complete individual, and after that, determine their physical features such as their hair color, their eye color, and as well as their ancestry through DNA analysis to help the African-American community in Richmond lay this remains to rest. How do I do this? This is done through identifying a key feature in the DNA sequence of an individual called a SNP. Now, take this SNP as a sequence of numbers from 1 to 4, with the second number changed to an 8, which makes it completely different from the usual sequence that we have. Now, the interesting thing is that in an individual, this sequence is the same throughout, and then it's different from person to person. So because of that, we are able to group bones into complete individuals. Now, once we get the individuals, we determine their eye color and their hair color. How do we do this? This sequence also determined already with this change, with the eye color and the hair color, as well as their ancestry. It's common throughout the population. That is why we have some people with brown eyes, black eyes, and then blue eyes, right? So we've sequenced this sequence of DNA already and put it in a database. So once we have an unknown individual, we compare the sequence to the database and then we are able to tell that, yes, this individual is of brown eyes, black hair, and is of African ancestry. Now through this process, we've been able to identify over 15 individuals, of which the one on the board was like the complete individual that we had, which was individual two. Now, we were able to determine that this individual was from Africa. He had black hair with brown eyes. And then in Africa, we were able to predict further that this individual was from the West Central Africa, between Nigeria and Ghana. Now, why is this project even important? It's important because it's going to help the African-American community in Richmond, first of all, have a sense of belongingness to these bones and then they will be able to lead their remains to rest. Beyond that, in the future, we are also going to use this same strategy to help identify individuals from mass destruction as well as individuals whose identity have been lost. And then it's going to also help give justice to individuals that also deserve it. Thank you.
Rights
© The Author
Comments
10th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 4, 2024.