Ancient samples alone were not enough to make a strong connection between human settlements and which species won the rights to be called a house mouse.
Fats are a good target, adds George Cody, acting director of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. — tough, plentiful, and known to survive
in ancient samples from Earth.
The next step will be to gather more
ancient samples from before and after a major environmental change — the end of a glaciation, for example, or the arrival of humans in the New World — to see whether any epigenetic changes correlate with the environmental transition.
They compared 20 tissue samples taken from modern (1865 to 1995) whale bones and teeth with 23
more ancient samples, dating from 2800 to 6800 years ago, that were collected from archaeological sites and dredging operations.
«We can expect to find calculus even on
very ancient samples,» says Amanda Henry of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
Ancient samples allow us to directly measure changes in the human microbiome at specific times and places in the past.»
To clarify this point, researchers at EURAC compared Ötzi's mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome with available data from
numerous ancient samples found at 14 different archaeological sites throughout Europe.
This file contains Supplementary Text comprising: Archaeological context for 83 newly
reported ancient samples (Section 1) and Population interactions between Anatolia, mainland Europe, and the Eurasian steppe (Section 2) with additional references.
Wild type alleles
in ancient samples are represented by yellow dots and derived alleles by red dots.
ICE CAMP: It's summer in Antarctica when Rochester Ice Core Lab researchers and their international colleagues arrive at Taylor Glacier to spend seven weeks
collecting ancient samples of ice and extracting the gases trapped within.
Sure enough, the team found methylated DNA in
the ancient sample.
A research team led by John Tarduno of the University of Rochester in New York went to Australia's Jack Hills and collected
ancient samples of rock containing the crystallized mineral zircon.
«I'm not so impassioned by ancient DNA that I have to work with
ancient samples for the rest of my life, but right now, for my work, I can get some unique insights that I wouldn't be able to without incorporating ancient samples.»
«There are lots of people who are interested in working on
these ancient samples.
She hoped that sequencing and analyzing the DNA in
these ancient samples would offer new information about how polar bears evolved.
They reconstructed and analyzed the genomes of 15
ancient samples of maize, comparing these data to a global collection of more than 2,500 modern lines.
Similarly,
all ancient samples contained a pbf allele that is common in corn but rare in teosinte.
Warming and the seas — both on the rise
Those ancient samples of sediment from 10 coastal wetlands in North Carolina provide some of the best evidence that sea - level rise closely follows warmer temperatures, Rahmstorf says.
Others take issue with the results because none of
the ancient samples come from the other putative sites of origin.
Professor Pallen explained the importance of the breakthrough, «Most other attempts to recover DNA sequences from historical or
ancient samples have suffered from the risk of contamination, because they rely on amplification of DNA in the laboratory, plus they have required onerous optimisation of target - specific assays.