Soil Secrets Unlock Equitable Futures Carter Clinton, PhD, Assistant Professor at NC State University GES Colloquium 3/10/2026 | Learn how burial soil genomics paired with descendant community partnership and bioethical data governance, can reconstruct buried histories and inform more equitable, socially accountable biomedical futures. __ Recorded from NC State’s GES Colloquium, this podcast examines how biotechnologies take shape in the world: microbiome engineering in built environments, gene editing and gene drives, forest and agricultural genomics, data governance and equity, risk and regulation, sci-art, and public engagement in practice. __ This talk will describe how applications of biotechnology, specifically DNA sequencing and computational genomics, are reshaping what we can learn about past communities while raising important questions about ethics, governance, and public trust. My lab develops non destructive approaches that recover DNA from burial soils, enabling research that minimizes disturbance of human remains and expands the scientific toolkit for studying historical populations. I will share what this technology can and cannot tell us about ancestry, health, and environmental context, and why careful interpretation matters when working with complex, sensitive samples. Using the Hillsborough Legacy Project as a case study, I will show how we integrate burial soil genomics and archaeological evidence from a historically enslaved population with saliva derived DNA from local living descendants, paired with genealogical and health surveys and community interviews. I will demonstrate how this combined design strengthens inference by linking molecular signals to documented histories and lived experience, while also requiring explicit attention to bioethical practice, including consent, governance of data use, and responsible communication of results. A central theme is how scientific innovation and social responsibility must be built together. I will discuss how descendant community partnership, consent, and data governance influence research design, what counts as evidence, and how results are communicated and used. The broader impacts extend beyond any single site. These methods can broaden representation in genomics, inform more equitable approaches to precision medicine, and provide communities with scientifically grounded narratives that complement archival records and oral histories. The talk will highlight how biotechnology interacts with society through questions of ownership, benefit sharing, and the risks of misinterpretation, and why interdisciplinary collaboration across biological sciences, social sciences, and the humanities is essential for responsible, high impact research. Related links: Persistent human-associated microbial signatures in burial soils from the 17th and 18th century New York African burial ground , CK Clinton , FLC Jackson – ISME Communications , 2025Core issues, case studies, and the need for expanded Legacy African American genomics , F Jackson, CK Clinton , J Caldwell – Frontiers in Genetics , 2023www.carterclinton.comDownload seminar poster Carter Clinton, PhD Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University | Profile Dr. Carter Clinton is a genetic anthropologist, National Geographic Explorer, and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University, where he directs the Ancestry, Soil, Health, and Evolutionary Studies (ASHES) Lab. He earned his PhD in Biology at Howard University and completed postdoctoral training at Pennsylvania State University. His research advances non-destructive genomics for historical populations, including work at the New York African Burial Ground that helped establish recovery and authentication of human ancient DNA (aDNA) from burial soils as an alternative to destructive skeletal sampling. The ASHES Lab applies these methods to newly documented burial sites in North Carolina, integrating soil derived human, microbial, plant, and animal aDNA using targeted and shotgun sequencing and unique bioinformatic pipelines (specific to highly fragmented, soil derived DNA) to connect molecular signatures with archaeological and archival context. With descendant community partnership, the lab compares human aDNA with genetic data from local living descendants, alongside health and genealogical surveys, and interviews, to support an evolutionary medicine framework that links ancestry, the environment, and social determinants of health to contemporary disease risk. Ethical stewardship, consent, data governance, and benefit sharing are embedded in each project. The Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Colloquium is a seminar series that brings in speakers to present and stimulate discussion on a variety of topics related to existing and proposed biotechnologies and their place within broader societal changes. GES Colloquium is taught by Dr. Zack Brown, and the seminars serve as a great ...
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