Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)
CHAPTER ONE – Opening and re-sealing the sarcophagi at the Matthias Church
SUMMARY: When opening the sarcophagi and removing the skeletal remains, special attention was paid to two things: (1) we operated with the utmost piety; (2) we extracted the skeletons wearing surgical attire, covering our heads and wearing masks and rubber gloves to avoid contamination (from our own DNA). Contamination is a real danger, because fresh epithelial DNA strands are much better preserved than the fractured DNA material from the bones. As a result, later DNA amplification by PCR multiplies contaminant DNA much more effectively than the ancient DNA template strands that are to be examined, leading to skewed results. After this point, Judit Olasz determined the Y-STR and A-STR markers of Miklós Kásler and Zoltán Szentirmay, and compared them with those of the bone samples. There were no matches, and thus no DNA contamination occurred (see Chapter 7). 36
