World's oldest DNA sequenced from million-year-old mammoths
Teeth from mammoths buried in the Siberian permafrost for more than a million years have yielded the world's oldest DNA ever sequenced, according to a study published on Wednesday, shining the genetic searchlight into the deep past.
Researchers said the three specimens, one roughly 800,000 years old and two over a million years old, provide important insights into the giant Ice Age mammals, including the ancient heritage of the woolly mammoth. The genomes far exceed the oldest previously sequenced DNA—a horse dating between 780,000 to 560,000 years ago.
"This DNA is incredibly old. The samples are a thousand times older than Viking remains, and even pre-date the existence of humans and Neanderthals," said Love Dalen, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, senior author of the study published in Nature.
Using a genome from an African elephant, a modern relative of the mammoth, as a blueprint for their algorithm, researchers were able to reconstruct parts of the mammoth genomes. The study found that the older Krestovka mammoth represents a previously unrecognised genetic lineage, which researchers estimated diverged from other mammoths around two million years ago and was ancestral to those that colonised North America.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-world-oldest-dna-sequenced-million-year-old.html
