La metabolomica applicata allo studio sul tartaro di Alessandro Farnese e Maria D’Aviz

The analysis of dental calculus is a promising tool for providing evi dence for the lifestyle of ancient people. Although dental calculus is com posed mainly by inorganic constituents, embedded organic materials deriving from different sources can be detected, including dietary and dietary debris deriving from accidental ingestion. Being able to provide a comprehensive fingerprinting of the investigated samples, mass spec trometry-based omics strategies are particularly challenging because of their sensitivity, high-throughput and discriminating power. High resolution mass spectrometry coupled to ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography was used to study the dental calculus metabo lome of both Duke Alessandro Farnese and Duchess Maria D’Aviz al lowing the identification of more than 200 metabolites able to suggest a different life-style between the Duke and his wife. The application of Principal Component Analysis made it possible to discriminate data sets belonging to the dental calculus samples of the Duke and Duchess.