Anton Chekhov and Robert Koch Cheek to Cheek: A Proteomic Study

Abstract

Five different letters and post cards as well as the shirt worn by Anton Chekhov on his death bed, stored in the State Literary-Memorial Museum-Reserve A. P. Chekhov Melikhovo (nearby Moscow), have been analyzed by applying EVA (an ethyl vinyl acetate foil studded with crushed strong anion and cation exchangers and with C resins) diskettes to these surfaces. Three different eluates (under acidic and basic conditions and with acetonitrile) were analyzed by high resolution mass spectrometry. The environmental microbiota present on samples and the Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain were described by a meta-proteomics approach. Eight identified M. tuberculosis proteins confirmed the presence of the bacterium and the cause of Chekhov's death, in addition to several sequenced peptides belonging to other bacterial species. The human plasma proteins and human keratins, detected on a tiny blood spot on the shirt, demonstrated the power of the combined approach.

“1984”: What Orwell could not predict. Proteomic analysis of his scripts

“…In the table reported in ref. [4], all peptides pertaining to the identified bacterium terminate with K or R and this makes sense, since of course all dress wear is not treated with acidifying chemicals and its pH in general is neutral. In the present case, the situation looked unfavorable, since the entire letter had been typewritten and the only traces left on the foil were just his handwritten signature.…”

“…The unique feature of our technology is that we can detect, on manuscripts of outstanding authors of the past as well as in documents in public archives (such as medical records), traces of the pathologies active at the time of these writings, as well as traces of medicaments and/or drugs of abuse ingested in the same period. This has been the case for Bulgakov [1,2], Chekhov [4], Casanova [5], and for the death registries of the plague epidemics in Milano in the year 1630 [3]. A nice summary of all these activities can be found in a recent review [12].…”

“…The captured species, after elution, are then analyzed via modern tools, such a GC or MS, either alone or hyphenated. The EVA technology, as applied up to the present in a number of investigations, had given to us excellent results [1‐7]. Prior to EVA, the only other nondamaging method for exploring Cultural Heritage was the rubbing technique of Collins group [8,9].…”

So you want to do biocodicology? A field guide to the biological analysis of parchment

“…Numerous groups have successfully analysed host DNA as well as the microbiome of various historical documents using NGS [7,38,46]. There has also been differing non-invasive methods developed to recover proteins from both paper and parchment documents [49][50][51] revealing evidence of disease and substance use, which can open exciting new avenues of research.…”

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux pour Casanova: Chemical‐ and bio‐analysis of his Memoirs

“…Unexpected results were obtained when consulting the margins of the original manuscript of Master y Margarita by Bulgakov , concerning his health state and assumption of medicaments. Unique data were additionally obtained in more recent investigations on the death registries in the Milano's lazaretto during the 1630 plague bout and also in exploring the causes of death of Anton Chekhov . In a further physico‐chemical analysis of the EVA diskettes (or films), their capture ability and absence of insults to the specimens under analysis was also amply proven .…”