Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

necessary). Although it had been a while since I’d gotten the chance to
bunny-suit up, I have been doing this a long time and have learned to trust
my equipment and abilities. If my suit did its job, none of the skin cells that
I shed would get onto the equipment or bench surfaces.
Just to make sure that I didn’t have any DNA on my suit, I spritzed
myself all over with one of the spray bottles filled with diluted bleach,
closing my eyes against the searing mist. With my eyes still closed, I
rubbed my arms, legs, torso, hands, and head with a special towel kept
solely for this purpose. Then I waited, listening to the air flow from the
overhead vents, counting the seconds until I knew enough time had passed
for the air to have diffused the bleach and I could open my eyes again. The
smell remained pervasive and intense, but you cannot be an ancient DNA
researcher with any degree of bleach sensitivity; the stuff is ubiquitous in
our line of work. Bleach—or more specifically, sodium hypochlorite—is a
strong oxidizer. It’s the third major line of defense against contamination.
We spray everything that enters the lab with diluted bleach, and we bleach
working surfaces and equipment constantly. The very few visitors we allow
into the lab sometimes comment on the “messiness” of our rust-stained
equipment and white-tinged benchtops, but this is a sign that the lab is as
clean as it should be. Bleach is the reason for coming to the lab in surgical
scrubs; I’d learned after many ruined outfits in graduate school that the
bleach often soaked through the bunny suit. I’d also learned on lab days that
even after I left, bleach was my lingering eau de parfum.
Once I was properly decontaminated and able to see again, I opened a
large metal cabinet in the corner of the garbing room. Inside the cabinet was
a stack of deep drawers, labeled with names like “Aleutian Islands,” “Elk
project,” “Kanarado soil.” And inside of each drawer lies history. Hundreds
of samples are in these drawers: of bone, of teeth, or of soil obtained from
archaeological excavations.
These samples, all of which have been obtained with the permission of
the present-day descendants or stakeholders, have the potential of unlocking
the history of how the Americas came to be peopled. Though the process of
readying oneself for a day of work in the lab may involve intricate and
complex procedures, I have often thought that the effort it takes to achieve a
level of cleanliness to open one of these drawers means so much more than
just garbing up properly.