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Ancient DNA is DNA preserved from subfossil remains of ancient animals or humans. It has been successfully extracted from Neanderthals, mammoths, and Egyptian priests. The oldest legitimate ancient DNA is around a million years old. The Neanderthal genome was fully sequenced in 2008. The genetic code of the 1918 Spanish flu virus was determined in 2007, which has been openly posted online.
Ancient DNA refers to DNA preserved from subfossil (not fully fossilized) remains of ancient animals or humans. For example, ancient DNA has been successfully extracted from the bones of Neanderthals, extinct human relatives; mammoths, large elephant-like beasts that roamed the Earth during the last Ice Age, and Egyptian priests who lived 4,000 years ago. The fossil evidence offers relatively little information regarding what can be learned from sequencing ancient DNA, so it is in high demand and there are many geneticists who specialize in ancient DNA.
The concept of ancient DNA was popularized by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, one of the most popular movies of the 1990s. In Jurassic Park, dinosaurs are revived by extracting their DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber that bit these dinosaurs shortly before they became trapped in tree resin. In fact, dinosaur DNA was at one point thought to have been recovered, but later analysis showed that this was not the case, and the DNA in question is from contamination. Studies suggest that the oldest legitimate ancient DNA is around a million years old. There is some disagreement as to whether DNA older than this can be stored in amber.
Ancient DNA means that the genomes of some extinct species, such as Neanderthals, can be sequenced. The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology fully sequenced the Neanderthal genome in 2008, making it the second hominin genome (besides humans) to be fully sequenced. The ancient DNA for the Neanderthal Genome Project was taken from a 38,000-year-old specimen found in a cave in Croatia.
Some tech risk experts were surprised when in 2007 the genetic code of the 1918 Spanish flu virus was determined based on DNA recovered from remains of humans who had died of the disease frozen in ice. The Spanish flu of 1918 was the worst global pandemic since the Black Death of 15th-century Europe, killing 15 million people. That’s more people than died in both world wars combined. The genetic code of this Spanish flu virus has been openly posted online, so that anyone can theoretically use it. This is the downside of ancient DNA studies.
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