Paleontology: Genomic sequencing of pleistocene cave bears

Autor(en)

James P. Noonan, Michael Hofreiter, Doug Smith, James R Priest, Nadin Rohland, Gernot Rabeder, Johannes Krause, James Chris Detter, Svante Pääbo, Edward M Rubin

Abstrakt

Despite the greater information content of genomic DNA, ancient DNA studies have largely been limited to the amplification of mitochondrial sequences. Here we describe metagenomic libraries constructed with unamplified DNA extracted from skeletal remains of two 40,000-year-old extinct cave bears. Analysis of ~1 megabase of sequence from each library showed that despite significant microbial contamination, 5.8 and 1.1% of clones contained cave bear inserts, yielding 26,861 base pairs of cave bear genome sequence. Comparison of cave bear and modern bear sequences revealed the evolutionary relationship of these lineages. The metagenomic approach used here establishes the feasibility of ancient DNA genome sequencing programs.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Paläontologie

Externe Organisation(en)

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Stanford University, United States Department of Energy

Journal

Science

Band

309

Seiten

597-600

Anzahl der Seiten

4

ISSN

0036-8075

Publikationsdatum

2005

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

105118 Paläontologie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/7785f282-6fe1-4d2b-80ab-b6dd0376769e