Precolumbian textiles from Peru played a central role in the development of Andean culture, and are primarily known to have been woven with a variety of native camelid hairs and cotton yarns. But close examination of some Andean textiles has revealed the presence of certain fibers, brown-grey or yellowish in their natural, undyed color, that are extremely fine and have special physical characteristics when observed under the microscope including pointed and elongated scale features, and a segmented medulla. The unusual fibers were postulated to come from the viscacha, a rodent from the Chinchillidae family that lives in the Western part of South America from Ecuador to Argentina. Indeed, the animal has been mentioned in sixteenth century historical chronicles and can be seen represented on Precolumbian and colonial-era tapestries. To identify these unusual fibers and trace their early use in Peruvian textile traditions, proteomics was used to characterize the hair proteome of viscacha and identify species markers in several selected textiles from museum collections. Reference samples of hairs were taken from known specimens for the most common species of viscacha (Lagidium sp. and Lagostomus sp.) and specific peptide markers of keratins were identified by denovo sequencing and by comparison with keratin sequences from Chinchilla lanigera, the closest relative for which the genome has been sequenced. Thirteen Chinchilla-only markers, six Lagidium-only markers and seven Lagostomus-only markers were identified. Subsequently, yarns were analyzed from seven different textiles selected on the basis of visual assessment of their physical characteristics. Of these seven textiles, five were indeed matched to a Chinchillidae species using public sequences and further confirmed as mountain viscacha from the Lagidium genus by using the specific markers determined in this study.

来自秘鲁的前哥伦布时期纺织品在安第斯文化的发展中发挥了核心作用，主要以各种当地骆驼毛和棉纱编织而成。但对一些安第斯纺织品的仔细检查发现，某些纤维的存在，其天然、未染色的颜色呈棕灰色或淡黄色，在显微镜下观察时具有非常精细的特殊物理特性，包括尖头和拉长的鳞片特征，以及分段髓质。据推测，这种不寻常的纤维来自 viscacha，这是一种生活在南美洲西部从厄瓜多尔到阿根廷的龙猫科啮齿动物。事实上，这种动物在 16 世纪的历史编年史中已经被提及，并且可以在前哥伦布时期和殖民时期的挂毯上看到。为了识别这些不寻常的纤维并追踪它们在秘鲁纺织传统中的早期用途，蛋白质组学被用来表征 viscacha 的头发蛋白质组，并在博物馆收藏的几种选定纺织品中识别物种标记。毛发参考样本取自已知标本中最常见的粘液菌（Lagidium sp。和Lagostomus sp.) 和角蛋白的特定肽标记物通过从头测序和与来自Chinchilla lanigera的角蛋白序列进行比较来鉴定，Chinchilla lanigera是基因组已测序的最接近的亲属。鉴定了13 个Chinchilla - only 标记、6 个Lagidium-only标记和 7 个Lagostomus-only标记。随后，根据对其物理特性的视觉评估，从七种不同的纺织品中分析纱线。在这七种纺织品中，有五种确实与使用公共序列的龙猫科物种相匹配，并进一步确认为来自Lagidium的山毛滴虫通过使用本研究中确定的特定标记来确定该属。