Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Despite being a rather young research field, the study of long dead and often extinct organisms' DNA, called ancient DNA research, has received great public attention since its beginnings and has been published in the highest profile journals.At the same time, many of the high-profile publications in this field have been shown to be erroneous, for example, alleged extinct dinosaur DNA (Woodward et al. 1994) that was later found to be artifacts derived from modern human DNA contamination (Zischler et al. 1995).In the last two decades, it has become clear that DNA survival is not unlimited and that, even under ideal conditions such as a cold and dry environment, DNA does not survive for more than a million years in fossil samples (Pääbo et al. 2004).Strict guidelines were established to ensure the authenticity of obtained results.This resulted in a growing number of high-quality studies.Nevertheless, ancient DNA research remained limited due to several reasons: first, the small amount of available material, second, the highly degraded and fragmented nature of the ancient DNA, and third, problems of contamination with contemporary DNA.Only recently, after new technologies and methodological approaches became available, is the field of ancient DNA experiencing a new era.Now studies once thought to be impossible are possible, such as large-scale population genetic studies (Shapiro et al. 2004;Debruyne et al. 2008), functional analysis of extinct genes (Römpler et al. 2006;Campbell et al. 2010), genetic studies of early modern humans (Krause et al. 2010a), as well as whole genome sequencing of extinct organisms (Miller et al. 2008;Green et al. 2010;Rasmussen et al. 2010).In this review some of the latest methodological developments in ancient DNA research will be discussed, in particular how new approaches allow us to overcome previous limitations while working with ancient hominin DNA.Keywords: ancient DNA,
Source: Max Planck Digital Library
Author: Krause, J.
Language: German
Subfield: Genetics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1542579229