Palaeoproteomics at UniVienna

The Douka Lab is the first specialised palaeoproteomics facility in Austria,  based at the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Vienna.

We investigate major questions linked to human evolution through the development and application of new biomolecular techniques. We focus on the taxonomic identification of collagenous and other organic materials and we routinely work on ancient bones, whether unidentifiable osteological remains or worked osseous artefacts.

With a new state-of-the-art MALDI-ToF Mass Spectrometer we perform in-house collagen fingerprinting (ZooMS) and continue work towards expanding the reference ZooMS library through addition of new taxa in it from less researched parts of the world.