Scientists at Penn State are leaders of a team that is the first to report the genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal. The scientists sequenced the genome of the woolly mammoth, an extinct species of elephant that was adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. They sequenced four billion DNA bases using next-generation DNA-sequencing instruments and a novel approach that reads ancient DNA highly efficiently.
The team sequenced the mammoth's nuclear genome using DNA extracted from the hairs of a mammoth mummy that had been buried in the Siberian permafrost for 20,000 years and a second mammoth mummy that is at least 60,000-years-old. The new data also provide additional evidence that woolly mammoths had low genetic diversity, meaning that they would be more susceptible to disease causing extinction.
Investigating the unique characteristics of woolly mammoths and why they went extinct are just some of the many tasks that the research team plans to pursue now that they have access to such a large quantity of sequence data. "This really is the first time that we have been able to study an extinct animal in the same detail as the ones living in our own time," said Schuster.
Another significant aspect of the study is that it was completed by a small group of scientists at a relatively low cost and over a short period of time. Schuster hopes that lessons learned from the mammoth genome about why some animals go extinct while others do not will be useful in protecting other species from extinction.
Source: http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=45868100
