About 52,000 years ago, the skinned hide of a Siberian woolly mammoth was exposed to conditions so frigid that it spontaneously freeze-dried, locking its DNA fragments into place.
About 52,000 years ago, the skinned hide of a Siberian woolly mammoth was exposed to conditions so frigid that it spontaneously freeze-dried, locking its DNA fragments into place.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists reported using this remarkable sample to reconstruct the animal’s genome in three dimensions—a breakthrough that could yield important new insights about extinct species and even boost efforts to bring them back to life.
Until now, ancient DNA specimens have only been found in short, scrambled fragments, severely limiting the amount of information researchers could extract.
« Now we show that, at least under some circumstances, it’s not just those snippets of that DNA that survive, but they survive in such a way that preserves the original arrangement », co-author Olga Dudchenko, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine, told AFP.
Understanding the 3D architecture of an organism’s genome —- the complete set of its DNA—is crucial for identifying which genes are active in specific tissues, revealing why brain cells think, heart cells beat, and immune cells fight disease.
It was long assumed that due to the rapid degradation of very small particles, such information would inevitably be lost to history.
But around a decade ago, an international team of scientists set out to find an ancient sample where the 3D organization of the DNA remained intact such that it could be fully reconstructed with a new analytical technique.
