DNA of 400,000 year old hominid sequenced

[gary]

Discover Magazine reports today on the almost complete sequencing of the
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a 400,000-year-old femur of Homo heidelbergensis,
an early hominid considered to be the ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.

A new record for the oldest hominid DNA sequencing.

Story here -
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-.../#.UqCMnNJDs1I

[multiweb (Marc)]

Maybe that will offer some clue about where the basque people come from.

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Wow, that's huge! There are plenty of younger sites where the DNA has not been preserved (eg the Hobbit) and many (most?) of the successful sites have been in much colder climates. I would love to have seen the scene in he lab when they found they had results.

[allan gould]

Thats an excellent result.
Did Mr Sidonio offer up his marrow to science?

[deanm (Dean)]

About 5 years ago (as a post-doc), I worked at Adelaide Uni's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

At that time, I held the group record for oldest aDNA isolated & amplified: 60 thousand years old from a horse tooth found in a cave in Siberia.

That 'record' has been obliterated over the last few years!

At ACAD, we were involved in Flores 'hobbit' research - we were unable to get any aDNA at all, most likely because of the hot, humid conditions (even in a cave).

So this 400,000 year-old aDNA from Spain was a great surprise & extremely impressive!

Dean

[gary]

Originally Posted by deanm

About 5 years ago (as a post-doc), I worked at Adelaide Uni's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

At that time, I held the group record for oldest aDNA isolated & amplified: 60 thousand years old from a horse tooth found in a cave in Siberia.

That 'record' has been obliterated over the last few years!

At ACAD, we were involved in Flores 'hobbit' research - we were unable to get any aDNA at all, most likely because of the hot, humid conditions (even in a cave).

So this 400,000 year-old aDNA from Spain was a great surprise & extremely impressive!

Dean

Hi Dean,

Thanks for sharing that background and great to hear of your involvement in this field!

If I may ask a question but please only answer if you get the chance?

I would imagine that sometimes it might be somewhat of a dilemma for researchers
to decide whether to attempt to extract DNA or not from a rare ancient specimen.

It is such a relatively new field that if you don't try, you won't know whether you
will be successful or not and each time you try probably moves forward the
science and art of the extraction techniques.

However, are there times when researchers think to themselves, "What if the best
extraction technique I know today damages the DNA? Should I stick the specimen in
the freezer and wait a year or more for the field to advance and then try?"

Would that be true? Would there be rare specimens in freezers in labs around the world
waiting until the techniques are honed or is it always a case of onward and upward
and let's give it our best shot today?

Best regards

Gary

[Pinwheel (Doug)]

Mistakes have happened before where scientists were convinced they were right when in truth the samples were contaminated. Remember the MARS bacteria...They stuffed that one up & then it was bacteria from space but turned out to be earthbourne stuff in the upper atmosphere.

400,000 year old DNA really, I'm not convinced.

No offense intended.

[nebulosity. (Jo)]

Four hundred thousand years old, Really

I always have doubts about the toted ages of stuff, especially like this. Did some one see it die?? Or was there a date written on it?? Or is this just blind faith in carbon dating?

What if the conditions had changed? Or what it one, or even two of the starting presumptions were wrong? And yet I have no doubt that of cause it's true...