The "Species and Sex by Proteome Investigation - SSPIN" project aimed to solve a critical and pervasive problem in the study of the past: the inability to perform economically viable, large-scale identification of species and sex from highly fragmented, tiny, or morphologically non-informative ancient bone and tooth specimens. Species and sex identification is highly valuable in archaeological, palaeoanthropological, and paleontological research. In these fields, which are closely linked to Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), obtaining accurate species and sex data is essential for reconstructing ancient life and societies. Species Identification (Species-ID) allows archaeologists to reconstruct how extinct human species and prehistoric communities of our species exploited animal resources, shedding light on ancient diet, technology, and ritual practices. Sex Identification (Sex-ID) is crucial in palaeoanthropology to distinguish whether morphological variation in fossils originates from sexual dimorphism within a species or from taxonomic diversity across different species.
The objective of SSPIN is to offer rapid, low-cost, and highly reliable Species and Sex identification based on a novel, high-resolution mass spectrometry-based proteomic approach. The project addresses the bottlenecks of current technology by increasing throughput (aiming for 100-200 samples processed per day) and lowering the cost-per-sample. SSPIN will make previously prohibitively expensive research projects move within reach on a global scale. Once the project objectives will be fully reached, the project will make the routine assignment of biological sex possible for large archaeological sample sets, including challenging specimens like human subadults, and it will transform the accurate reconstruction of sexual dimorphism in hominid fossil remains into a standard practice.
