Mammoth “Metagenome” Sequencing

Using a combination of novel techniques, an international team of researchers has sequenced a chunk of ancient DNA belonging to a 27,000 year-old woolly mammoth and “fellow travelers” from its remains, including a sample of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and plants that lived at the same time as the mammoth.

As reported in Science, the techniques produced an impressive amount of nuclear DNA, which is normally less prevalent than mitochondrial DNA and more difficult to extract from ancient remains. The sequencing feat performed by Hendrik Poinar and colleagues extracted nuclear DNA from the mammoth's jawbone, concentrating the DNA into a single-molecule serving size that was enclosed in a lipid bubble before it was amplified and sequenced by a relatively new technique called pyrosequencing.

The researchers say nearly half of the “metagenome” they sequenced belongs to the mammoth and is very similar to the African elephant genome.

27 December 2005