"Gee, I hope it isn't mine."
Posted on 09/27/2007 10:18:39 PM PDT by saganite
Science Daily — Stephan C. Schuster and Webb Miller of Penn State, working with Thomas Gilbert from Copenhagen and a large international consortium, discovered that hair shafts provide an ideal source of ancient DNA -- a better source than bones and muscle for studying the genome sequences of extinct animals. Their research achievement, described in a paper to be published in the journal Science on Sept. 28, includes the sequencing of entire mitochondrial genomes from 10 individual woolly mammoths.
Schuster and Miller, working at Penn State's Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, and Gilbert, from the Center for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen, led a team of collaborators that includes a large group of researchers and museum curators from the United States, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The research team obtained hair from 10 woolly mammoths collected from a wide swathe of northern Siberia and with dates of death spanning approximately 38,000 years -- from 50,000 years to 12,000 years ago. Before this study, only seven mitochondrial genomes from extinct animals had been published: four from ancient birds, two from mammoths and one from a mastodon.
"DNA in bones and muscle usually degrades and becomes contaminated with genetic material from other sources such as bacteria, limiting its usefulness in scientific studies," Schuster explained. Because only a tiny proportion of ancient bones and muscle are preserved in such a way that uncontaminated DNA can be recovered, research with such materials has involved laborious efforts, sometimes spanning as long as six years for a single study. In contrast, Miller said, "Once I get the data from the genome sequencer, it takes only five minutes to assemble the entire mitochondrial genome."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
LMAO!!
Do bring me one of those from an elephant, next chance you get.
Great bloody Ke-rist. I had thought that FReepers were sufficiently intelligent not to require disclaimers forever and a day.
Clearly, too optimistic a view.
"Gee, I hope it isn't mine."
See post #22.
And I thought that freepers were intelligent enough to understand that a reference to fertilizing an egg would be understood by anyone with enough biology to understand that the mammalian egg is fertilized by sperm even if you’re not a chicken. Apparently there is still the 10% that never get the word.
I love it when you talk dirty!!! LOL
Take THAT subject up with our colleague Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I made exactly zero comment upon fertilising eggs.
elephant egg???
Aren’t elephants mammals? Geez, I’ve screwed the pooch if they aren’t (no personal comments, please). The only mammal, to my knowledge, that propagates via eggs is the curious duckbill platypus.
Ahem. Your own comments, revealing an astonishing lack of knowledge. Back to school with thee.
Not having ESP, there was nothing obvious about it. Eggs are eggs, with hard shells, soft shells, or no shells, internal or external.
No other way to talk!
There is more to Dr. Suess than meets the eye. You should read more. ;)
By the way, pinging somebody you are referring to in a post is common courtesy around here!
Yes, do you have a problem with that?
Nag fabbit! I searched carefully for that, and you beat me - but my photo is bigger.:)
What word?
hair shafts provide an ideal source of ancient DNA — a better source than bones and muscle
Yes, that’s the one.
Owww, that’s nasty! No wonder you screw your pooch!
I feel terrible, it wasn't you that buggered your dog, I should have known it was SAJ.
Oops. There you go projecting your own issues onto others.
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