{"id":500,"date":"2003-04-29T02:25:34","date_gmt":"2003-04-29T02:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=500"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:34:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:34:50","slug":"hitting-dna-pay-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"hitting DNA pay dirt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If scientists want to study ancient DNA, they  usually extract it from fossils, the remains of ancient plants and  animals. But molecular biologists from the University of Copenhagen  found DNA in dirt instead. They drilled cores up to 100 feet deep in the  Siberian permafrost, analyzed the frozen soil, and hit a jackpot of DNA  fragments. As they report in the April 18 <em>Science,<\/em> they found the  oldest authenticated plant DNA and the DNA of animals, some long  extinct. The permafrost contained DNA from woolly mammoth, bison,  reindeer, and musk ox, dating back 30,000 years, as well as the DNA of  herbs, mosses, trees, and shrubs, some of which lived nearly 400,000  years ago &#8212; the oldest yet found. Much of the plant DNA is probably from  roots, which would have been well protected underground, and the animal  DNA is thought to come from cells sloughed off in their feces. The team  also looked at samples of silt from New Zealand, and again were able to  recover DNA from various plants and animals, showing that soil does not  need to be frozen to obtain identifiable DNA. The new technique of  analyzing soil may help reconstruct past ecosystems, helping researchers  gain a better picture of the prehistoric world. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 4\/29\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If scientists want to study ancient DNA, they usually extract it from fossils, the remains of ancient plants and animals. But molecular biologists from the University of Copenhagen found DNA in dirt instead. They drilled cores up to 100 feet &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=500\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}