Ancient Cave Bear DNA Extracted and Decoded

diamond writes "The BBC reports that 'scientists have extracted and decoded the DNA of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago.' The sequencing technique could also work for Neanderthals. However, 'the idea of obtaining DNA from dinosaurs, depicted in the film Jurassic Park, remains science fiction.' Also reported by Nature Magazine."

Comments

Role of mitochondria and cytoplasm

[G4from128k]

If this is going to work, scientists will need copies of both the DNA in the nucleus AND mitochondria (and ways to synthesize the nucleus and mitochondria of the target organism). Implanting a neanderthal nucleus in a human (or any other) kind of egg will not necessarily create a pure neanderthal clone (we might even need to clone the cytoplasmic contents). A study of cloning fish across species boundaries showed that some very basic physical characteristics (e.g., the number of vertebra in the backbone) were controlled by the mitochondria or cytoplasm of the egg, not by the genes in the nucleus.

It's amazing that they can reconstruct the DNA of long-dead creatures but its also clear that nuclear DNA is not the only information-carrying object in biological organisms.

Re:didn't they find t. rex soft tissue recently?

[Rei]

There may be hundreds of thousands of types of biomolecules in your average cell. DNA is one of the less stable among them. Finding the more stable molecules isn't that big of a deal; it's the less stable ones that we want.