Isolating ancient DNA, Svante Paabo

Interviewee: Svante Paabo. Evolutionary geneticist Svante Paabo speaks about the limitations of working with DNA from fossils. (DNAi Location: Applications > Human origins > Comparisons > DNA > Isolating ancient DNA)

So what we are actually, now, wondering would of course be to go back really far in time and isolate DNA from dinosaurs that are millions of years old and so on. Unfortunately from what we know about the chemical stability of DNA, how the agents such as water or background radiation affect DNA, that will as far as we can tell, be impossible, since probably within 100,000 to 500,000 years, we can actually calculate that there is no reason to expect that DNA will survive in fossils.

ancient dna,human origins,background radiation,location applications,chemical stability,interviewee,geneticist,fossils,dinosaurs

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