Million year old mammoth - sequenced!

https://theconversation.com/amp/we-sequenced-the-oldest-ever-dna-from-million-year-old-mammoths-155485

@wildgrass said
https://theconversation.com/amp/we-sequenced-the-oldest-ever-dna-from-million-year-old-mammoths-155485

Is it possible to inject the DNA into an elephant embryo and bring the species back to life?

It would be half mammoth and half elephant.

...right?

@phil-a-dork said
It would be half mammoth and half elephant.

...right?

Not if it is a full sequence of DNA and RNA. It would be a mammoth from a surrogate elephant mother. The elephant DNA would be removed from an embryo and replaced with the mammoth DNA.

This is theoretically possible if the mammoth DNA and RNA is complete with no mistakes. I am wondering why the article didn't bring it up unless they are unsure they got it right.

Interesting 🤔

I think they should experiment and try to bring back those animals of long ago.
Dinosaurs too 😉

@phil-a-dork said
Interesting 🤔

I think they should experiment and try to bring back those animals of long ago.
Dinosaurs too 😉

There were no glaciers to preserve dinosaurs back that far. Cool to think about, but Jurassic Park is unlikely to happen.

So there are no amber rocks with a mosquito in it?

Now that I think about it...

How can a mosquito penetrate dino skin?

@metal-brain said
Is it possible to inject the DNA into an elephant embryo and bring the species back to life?

That's an interesting thought, although I don't think it's possible.

The DNA is undoubtedly fragmented. They can sequence the pieces of DNA with short reads but it would not "function" as DNA in a living organism. I suppose they could do a version of the Jurassic Park thing, and compare the sequence to an intact elephant DNA sequence and edit in the corresponding changes, but that's an enormous undertaking.

If the DNA was intact it would absolutely be possible.

@wildgrass said


The DNA is undoubtedly fragmented.

Yes, and nearly all experts on this say it is SO much so that the genetic information has simply been lost thus it cannot be recovered no matter HOW advanced the genetic analysis technology!
see;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/14/scientists-demonstrate-that-jurassic-park-couldnt-happen/?sh=248cf4632f7e
"...
There are quite a few things about the movie Jurassic Park that aren't very scientific.
...
In the movie, scientists managed to clone dinosaurs by finding dinosaur blood within mosquitoes that had been fossilized in amber. They then used the DNA in the blood to clone the dinosaurs for their park.

In real life, alas, even the very premise of Jurassic Park turns out to be false.
...
the research team examined insects that had been preserved in copal, which is an intermediate stage from tree resin to its final form as fossilized amber. The samples they used were from copal that ranged in age from 60 years to 10,600 years. But when they examined those samples with the best DNA sequencing methods known, they were unable to find any ancient DNA at all.
This same research team has successfully retrieved ancient DNA from other types of preserved life forms, so the fault isn't the method. This also goes further to demonstrate that claims that DNA had been obtained from amber in the 1990s, which had never been independently replicated, were probably the result of contamination.
"inability to detect aDNA in copal specimens, despite using sensitive next generation methods, suggest that there is no protected environment in this type of material, and that DNA survival in resin inclusions is no better, and perhaps worse, than that in air-dried museum insects."

Also see

https://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/10/1754212/half-life-of-dna-is-521-years-jurassic-park-impossible-after-all
"...By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on."

So its clearly completely impossible for any dino DNA to have survived to the modern day.

@humy said
Yes, and nearly all experts on this say it is SO much so that the genetic information has simply been lost thus it cannot be recovered no matter HOW advanced the genetic analysis technology!
see;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/14/scientists-demonstrate-that-jurassic-park-couldnt-happen/?sh=248cf4632f7e
"...
There are quite a few things about the movie Jurass ...[text shortened]... so on."

So its clearly completely impossible for any dino DNA to have survived to the modern day.

In this case, though, we were able to get sequence data. It seems conceivable that an alignment with elephant DNA, and using elephant DNA as an initial template, this would be possible to do with the million year old mammoth.

It's essentially the reverse of the Jurassic Park method. You would start with the existing species and edit in the unique parts that make mammoths.

@wildgrass said
In this case, though, we were able to get sequence data.

Arr, sorry; Failed to notice there you were actually talking about mammoth dna and not dino dna. That's kind-of what I get from trying to read way too fast skimming over the odd word.
But hang on! Something here still doesn't add up because that mammoth dna is about a million years old (and said to be up to 1.6 million years old) and yet the links I just read above imply no dna that old can survive! But that mammoth dna was extracted from freezing conditions which might have greatly slowed down the rate dna fragmentation. I guess that's the explanation for that one?

@humy said
Yes, and nearly all experts on this say it is SO much so that the genetic information has simply been lost thus it cannot be recovered no matter HOW advanced the genetic analysis technology!
see;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/14/scientists-demonstrate-that-jurassic-park-couldnt-happen/?sh=248cf4632f7e
"...
There are quite a few things about the movie Jurass ...[text shortened]... so on."

So its clearly completely impossible for any dino DNA to have survived to the modern day.

I have re-read those links and reconsidered and now think it might be possible for readable dino dna to have survived after all!
This is because when they talked about the "DNA half-life of 521 years", they were only talking about the half life of the chemical bonds between nucleotides, not the dna bases themselves which I assume can last a lot longer.
This means even if ALL those chemical bonds between nucleotides have been broken, the dna bases may be still there intact and each still in its correct i.e. original position. This means all we need to capture the genome in the sample is for science to develop a method for imaging the position of all the molecules, including dna bases, in a sample, and then it is just a simple matter for a computer to process all those images to capture the whole genome.
Still, this might still be a stretch because I assume the individual dna bases themselves have a 'half-life' and it would still be impossible to do if that half-life is too short. Anyone here got any info on the likely half-life of fossilized individual dna bases?

@wildgrass said
That's an interesting thought, although I don't think it's possible.

The DNA is undoubtedly fragmented. They can sequence the pieces of DNA with short reads but it would not "function" as DNA in a living organism. I suppose they could do a version of the Jurassic Park thing, and compare the sequence to an intact elephant DNA sequence and edit in the corresponding changes, but that's an enormous undertaking.

If the DNA was intact it would absolutely be possible.

If the DNA is undoubtedly fragmented how would they know they have the right DNA? I think this is an over rated and overly hyped story.

@metal-brain said
If the DNA is undoubtedly fragmented how would they know they have the right DNA?

This is what happens when you comment about something you assume you know all about but don't; You just embarrass yourself by showing how arrogantly ignorant you are.
Very old dna is always degraded and fragmented and the dna analysis involves a statistical analysis of the many fragmented broken parts to workaround that to construct a picture of the original unfragmented dna.
In fact, at least for relatively young samples i.e. samples that aren't thousands of years old, the dna in a sample is often first DELIBERATELY fragmented in the lab to then make the dna analysis easier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_fragmentation
DNA from much older samples isn't first deliberately fragmented in tha lab because it is already fragmented, often far TOO much so.
Study the basic science; then come back to us.

I think this is an over rated and overly hyped story.

No, it isn't just a "story", idiot! It is "science". Stop assuming you know better than the experts; YOU DON'T! I don't so you CERTAINLY don't!