Biocodicology - A Deeper Dive

[Bernd]

DNA is extremely stable if stored under the right conditions. Likewise it degrades and fragments fast under unfavorable ones. And the surface of parchment isn't exactly the best place. Surely not the worst but far from ideal.

There's no doubt it would be possible to extract DNA fragments of many people who have handled the manuscript over time. However distinguishing between these people and building a DNA profile of the scribe(s), most likely the oldest and most degraded human genetic material present in the VM, seems a bit of a stretch to me.
New sequencing methods bring increasingly powerful techniques to extract and sort DNA of countless organisms from environmental samples but I am unsure how far this could be deployed on minute traces of highly fragmented DNA of multiple humans. If there was a single individual creating and handling all the bifolios over a long time maybe. If we are indeed dealing with a collective of scribes and maybe illustrators each creating a part of the VM within a short time things get really hard.
But theoretically these 2 hypotheses could be tested by taking samples from all bifolios and comparing DNA profiles. If there are significant differences between bifolios attributed to different scribes this would be an indication for a multi-scribe scenario. If we see one massive DNA profile across all bifolios this would rather speak for a single author. All providing later contamination could be removed. This however likely would require a destructive approach.

First and foremost anyone interested (and capable) of carrying out such analyses on the VM must demonstrate the feasibility and robustness of the proposed methods and the significance of potential results in relation to the expected damage to the manuscript. The boundaries of current technology could relatively easily be tested on less valuable documents, same for the proteome of the parchment or albumen in paint. I'm sure a lot is possible and even more will be in the near future but the VM is not the right proving ground for experiments.