Thursday, May 30, 2013

Scientists Recover Wooly Mammoth Blood

The half life of all DNA is 521 years.

Did you even READ that article?

"After cell death, enzymes start to break down the bonds between the nucleotides that form the backbone of DNA, and micro-organisms speed the decay. In the long run, however, reactions with water are thought to be responsible for most bond degradation. Groundwater is almost ubiquitous, so DNA in buried bone samples should, in theory, degrade at a set rate."

So, that 'half life' is for buried bones in fairly specific situations. It doesn't apply everywhere.

Best part of all, is that story you linked to has its own related stories, and the first link is another story where they recovered DNA from 19,000 year old eggshells.

The second link is a story about sequencing the DNA from 100,000+ year old polar bears. Where the 'cold DRY' environment allows DNA to be preserved.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/-8mlRUm_c4g/story01.htm

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