Teeth from Siberian mammoths yield oldest DNA ever recovered
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have recovered the oldest DNA on record, extracting it from the molars of mammoths that roamed northeastern Siberia up to 1.2 million years ago in research that broadens the horizons for understanding extinct species.
The researchers said last Wednesday that they had recovered and sequenced DNA from the remains of three individual mammoths - elephant cousins that were among the large mammals that dominated Ice Age landscapes - entombed in permafrost conditions conducive to preservation of ancient genetic material.
While the remains were discovered starting in the 1970s, new scientific methods were needed to extract the DNA.
The oldest of the three, discovered near the Krestovka River, was approximately 1.2 million years old. Another, from near the Adycha river, was approximately 1 to 1.2 million years old. The third, from near the Chukochya river, was roughly 700,000 years old.
“This is by a wide margin the oldest DNA ever recovered,” said evolutionary geneticist Love Dalén of the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden, who led the research published in the journal Nature.
Until now, the oldest DNA came from a horse that lived in Canada’s Yukon Territory about 700,000 years ago. By way of comparison, our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared roughly 300,000 years ago.
DNA is the self-replicating material that carries genetic information in living organisms - sort of a blueprint of life.
“This DNA was extremely degraded into very small pieces, and so we had to sequence many billions of ultra-short DNA sequences in order to puzzle these genomes together,” Dalén said.
Most knowledge about prehistoric creatures comes from studying skeletal fossils, but there is a limit to what these can tell about an organism, particularly relating to genetic relationships and traits.
Ancient DNA can help fill in the blanks but is highly perishable. Sophisticated new research techniques are enabling scientists to recover ever-older DNA. “It would be a wild guess, but a maximum of two to three million years should be doable,” Dalén said.
That could shed light on some bygone species but would leave many others unattainable - including the dinosaurs, who went extinct 66 million years ago.
“When we can get DNA on a millionyear time scale, we can study the process of speciation (formation of new species) in a much more detailed way. Morphological analyses on bones and teeth usually only allow researchers to study a handful of characteristics in the fossils, whereas with genomics we are analyzing many tens of thousands of characteristics,” Dalén said.
The researchers gained insights into mammoth evolution and migration by comparing the DNA to that of mammoths that lived more recently. The last mammoths disappeared roughly 4,000 years ago.
The oldest of the three specimens, the Krestovka mammoth, belonged to a previously unknown genetic lineage that more
than 2 million years ago diverged from the lineage that led to the well-known woolly mammoth.
Geneticist Tom van der Valk of SciLifeLab in Sweden, the study’s first author, said it appears that members of the Krestovka lineage were the first mammoths to migrate from Siberia into North America over a now-disappeared land bridge about 1.5 million years ago, with woolly mammoths later migrating about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.
The Adycha mammoth’s lineage apparently was ancestral to the woolly mammoth, they found, and the Chukochya individual is one of the oldest-known woolly mammoth specimens.
DNA analyses showed that genetic variants associated with enduring frigid climes such as hair growth, thermoregulation, fat deposits, cold tolerance and circadian rhythms were present long before the origin of the woolly mammoth.
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - An Israeli bar doubled as a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on Thursday, with free drinks given to those who got the shots.
More than 43% percent of Israel’s 9 million population have received at least one dose of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine, the Health Ministry says.
But officials worry that turnout may wane and hold back Israeli plans to begin reopening the economy.
With many bars forced to close because of the pandemic, Tel Aviv’s Jenia gastropub, in partnership with the municipality, opened its doors to an unusual type of patron: new vaccinees, drawn by the offer of drinks on the house.
The drinks were nonalcoholic, as a medical precaution.
“I thought it is a really good opportunity to come and get the vaccine, because I didn’t have either the time or the ability to go to other places,” said May Perez, among dozens of people who turned up for their first shots.
BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As the United States officially re-enters the Paris climate accord on Friday, expectations are rising that Washington will step up funding to help poor countries adopt clean energy and adapt to more extreme weather as the planet warms.
Under climate-change sceptic Donald Trump, the U.S. government did provide finance for things like building solar power systems in Africa and protecting people from storms and floods in Asia, as part of its international development aid.
But Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement and refused to deliver two-thirds of a $3-billion pledge made by his predecessor to the Green Climate Fund, set up under U.N. climate talks to help developing nations tackle global warming.
Environmental groups this week delivered a petition signed by more than 50,000 U.S. residents, urging the administration under new U.S. President Joe Biden to do its “fair share” in cutting emissions and providing climate finance.
Brandon Wu, director of policy for ActionAid USA, said that, as the biggest long-term contributor to climateheating emissions, the United States had a moral and legal responsibility to help vulnerable communities now bearing the brunt of extreme weather and rising seas in a warming world.
“Doing our fair share of climate action means addressing the injustices we have visited on those communities – starting with providing real financial support for just and equitable climate action in developing countries,” he said in a statement.
Earlier this month, ActionAid and 45 other development agencies and green groups issued an open letter calling on Biden’s government to pledge and support appropriation of at least $8 billion for the Green Climate Fund.
That amount includes the $2 billion owed plus a doubling of the initial U.S. pledge for the coming three years, in line with commitments by other wealthy governments such as France and Germany.
The groups also said the U.S. government should provide $400 million over four years to the smaller Adaptation Fund, another U.N.-linked fund that boosts climate resilience in poor nations. That would mark a first-ever U.S. contribution to the fund.
CLIMATE FINANCE PLAN
Hopes are high that Biden’s government will make up for lost time after U.S. climate envoy John Kerry promised in January his country would “make good” on its climate finance promise, without specifying when or how.
Most experts took that to mean the United States would deliver the money Trump withheld from the Green Climate Fund.
In an executive order on climate change, signed on Jan. 27, Biden also instructed government departments to craft a climate finance plan to help developing countries reduce emissions, protect critical ecosystems and build resilience to climate change impacts.
The plan is due to be submitted by the end of April, but experts hope it will land before a leaders’ climate summit Biden has convened for major-emitting nations on April 22.
Giving a little more when all seems lost From 19A
“Right now I am giving God the praise for bringing my mother a far way. The burns have healed up. I am feeling the squeeze money wise. You know, when my husband was alive I used to sometimes quarrel how his salary was small. But now I see when it put with me own how much it used to do. Now I have all the bills to pay and I wish I had his salary to help. I really miss him because he was very supportive.
“I am just trying to build up some body strength now because I lost a lot of weight, but my mother is doing better she is now walking. When I come home in the afternoon I try to get like a 15-minute rest and then I am back up on my feet. I just have to keep going, I don’t have a choice,” she ended quietly.
This sister is a fighter, and I am sure her story has inspired someone. We are all fighting our battles we just have to take whatever support comes our way and just as the sister said, keep going, we don’t have a choice.