1,000 Years Old Viking DNA Retrieved Successfully
By Nick May 28, 2008
Until now, scientists were unable to extract samples of pure human DNA from ancient skeletons, mostly because their contamination with the abundant modern DNA that came from the workers that took them to light.
All that has changed now, as Jorgen Dissing conducted a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen in extracting authentic DNA from ten Viking skeletons from around AD 1,000. The samples were so hard to be kept unaltered because humans are implicated in all the steps of the process of analyzing them, so the more tests they were subject to, the more difficult it become.
The procedure proved that DNA samples can indeed be extracted from old animals and skeletons without being contaminated with human DNA. Tests made on these samples showed a number of differences in their structure and our own. This could be a major step for scientists in understanding how the DNA structure evolved over millenniums.
Topics: Research |
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