Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 49: 100 Years of Mass Spectrometry 2

A 49.4: Invited Talk

Friday, March 22, 2013, 15:30–16:00, E 415

Dating human DNA with the 14C bomb peak — •Walter Kutschera, Jakob Liebl, and Peter Steier — VERA Laboratory, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

In 1963 the limited nuclear test ban treaty stopped nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. By then the addition from bomb-produced 14C had doubled the 14C content of the atmosphere. Through the CO2 cycle this excess exchanged with the hydrosphere and biosphere leading to a rapidly decreasing 14C level in the atmosphere. Today we are almost back to the pre-nuclear level. As a consequence all people on Earth who lived during the second half of the 20th century were exposed to this rapidly changing 14C signal.

A few years ago, a group at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm started to use the 14C bomb peak signal in DNA to determine retrospectively the age of cells from various parts of the human body (brain, heart, fat). In a collaboration with this group, we have studied the age of olfactory bulb neurons in the human brain. For this investigation, 14C AMS measurements were developed at VERA for very small carbon samples in the range from 2 to 4 micrograms.

In the presentation the general concept of 14C bomb peak dating of human DNA and several applications will be discussed.