Million year old mammoth - sequenced!

@humy said
This is what happens when you comment about something you assume you know all about but don't; You just embarrass yourself by showing how arrogantly ignorant you are.
Very old dna is always degraded and fragmented and the dna analysis involves a statistical analysis of the many fragmented broken parts to workaround that to construct a picture of the original unfragmented dna.
...[text shortened]... science". Stop assuming you know better than the experts; YOU DON'T! I don't so you CERTAINLY don't!

You have not proven anything I said wrong.
You are assuming again. You are assuming they got it right and you don't know that. Even if they did get it right they can't accomplish much with it anytime soon.

You sure go through a lot of writing claiming I am wrong and never proving anything of the sort. Do you read what you write before posting? Are you aware of how meaningless your writing is and how obvious it is that you are letting your emotions take control of you in an irrational way?

@metal-brain said
You have not proven anything I said wrong.

"If the DNA is undoubtedly fragmented how would they know they have the right DNA? I think this is an over rated and overly hyped story" (your EXACT words)

Now lets see what the science says about that, shall we?;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_fragmentation
"...DNA fragmentation is often necessary prior to library construction or subcloning for DNA sequences.
...
DNA Fragmentation plays an important part in forensics, especially that of DNA profiling.
..."

and

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00436-x
"...Researchers had suspected that ancient DNA could survive beyond one million years, if the right sample could be found. Once an organism dies, its chromosomes shatter into pieces that get shorter over time. Eventually, the DNA strands become so small that — even if they can be extracted — they lose their information content.

Orlando’s team found that fragments as short as 25 DNA letters in their horse bone, from the Canadian Yukon Territory, could still be interpreted.
..."

You are assuming they got it right and you don't know that.

I do know it should be my (and our) default assumption they almost certainly got it right and you haven't and that's at least in part because they, NOT you, are the EXPERTS, while you are OBVIOUSLY not.

Even if they did get it right they can't accomplish much with it anytime soon.

Irrelevant; whether much can be 'accomplished' by a finding has no relevance on its validity; Something can be found to be true, such as Pluto having 5 moons, and have little or even no practical value; But it obviously would still be true nevertheless. Only a complete moron would think otherwise.

@metal-brain said
If the DNA is undoubtedly fragmented how would they know they have the right DNA? I think this is an over rated and overly hyped story.

Well, as it turns out most DNA is fragmented prior to sequencing anyways. Intact DNA chromosomes are important if you want to conduct any functional tests, but completely irrelevant from a sequencing perspective.

Sequencing is typically done in 50-100 base pair "reads". After millions of reads, they stitch the longer sequence together by comparing overlapping regions in the shorter sequences. Stitching the reads together gives you the larger picture of genetic information on the full chromosome.

Interestingly, there are still parts of the human genome that are extremely difficult to sequence and largely unknown. This is because those regions contain lots of repetitive sequences that make it nearly impossible to stitch reads together.

@wildgrass said
Well, as it turns out most DNA is fragmented prior to sequencing anyways. Intact DNA chromosomes are important if you want to conduct any functional tests, but completely irrelevant from a sequencing perspective.

Sequencing is typically done in 50-100 base pair "reads". After millions of reads, they stitch the longer sequence together by comparing overlapping regions in ...[text shortened]... egions contain lots of repetitive sequences that make it nearly impossible to stitch reads together.

So the sequences cannot be functional.

Why is this important then? I suppose you could make an elephant hairy from it, but what else?

@metal-brain said
So the sequences cannot be functional.

Exactly what do you mean by that?
Which particular "sequences" are you referring to here and in what sense they "cannot be functional"? You seem to make no sense and show you understand nothing of what he just said as he (correctly) indicated the genetic analysis ends up sequencing WHOLE chromosomes, not just short fragments of them. From there we can then, at least in theory and potentially, artificially physically recreate those WHOLE chromosomes, which can then be inserted into a cell to do something a lot more complicated than, as you said, "..make an elephant hairy from it".

@humy said
Exactly what do you mean by that?
Which particular "sequences" are you referring to here and in what sense they "cannot be functional"? You seem to make no sense and show you understand nothing of what he just said as he (correctly) indicated the genetic analysis ends up sequencing WHOLE chromosomes, not just short fragments of them. From there we can then, at least in theory ...[text shortened]... a cell to do something a lot more complicated than, as you said, "..make an elephant hairy from it".

Read what wildgrass wrote. Don't just skim through it carelessly. Actually read and understand what he wrote.

@metal-brain said
Read what wildgrass wrote.

including the part you are apparently too stupid to understand which is;

"Stitching the reads together gives you the larger picture of genetic information on the full chromosome. "

?

You still haven't explained your previous moronic statement...still waiting...

@humy said
including the part you are apparently too stupid to understand which is;

"Stitching the reads together gives you the larger picture of genetic information on the full chromosome. "

?

You still haven't explained your previous moronic statement...still waiting...

How about this part?:

"Interestingly, there are still parts of the human genome that are extremely difficult to sequence and largely unknown. This is because those regions contain lots of repetitive sequences that make it nearly impossible to stitch reads together."

Is he right or wrong?

@metal-brain said
So the sequences cannot be functional.

Why is this important then? I suppose you could make an elephant hairy from it, but what else?

I don't think the intention for generating this sequence data was to resurrect a mammoth (although such projects are ongoing).

It's extremely interesting from an evolutionary point of view. How does the genetic material of organisms from a million years ago compare to their more recent ancestors and modern "descendants"?

It's also extremely interesting from a molecular and cell biology point of view as well. Mammoths were remarkably well adapted to extreme cold. What were the attributes that conferred those adaptations in large mammalian species? By comparing the coding DNA sequences we can understand the differences in these organisms at the protein level. There are actually a few other mammoth DNA sequences out there that provide useful points of evolutionary comparison. How have protein structures, sequences and functions changed over the course of evolutionary history.

It's also a very important find from a historical science / paleontology perspective. Looking again at divergent sequences, researchers can piece together a "lineage". In this case, the research is ongoing, but it appears there were several different species of mammoth that diverged well over a million years ago. Some gave rise to modern elephants, and others died off. This gives us a glimpse into the history of our world that would not be possible based on fossil records alone.

So there you go. It's important I think.

@metal-brain said
How about this part?:

"Interestingly, there are still parts of the human genome that are extremely difficult to sequence and largely unknown. This is because those regions contain lots of repetitive sequences that make it nearly impossible to stitch reads together."

Is he right or wrong?

He is right.
What about it?

@humy said
He is right.
What about it?

There will be no resurrections of the mammoth.
Nothing that cool here.

@metal-brain said
There will be no resurrections of the mammoth.

If THAT is what you thought he just said there in that statement, you don't understand plain simple English and are even more stupid than I thought.
Nothing he said in that statement implies "There will be no resurrections of the mammoth" i.e. of the mammoth genome.
Just for starters he was talking about the HUMAN genome in that statement, NOT mammoth. Reminder;
"..."Interestingly, there are still parts of the human genome that are..."
Also, even if he WAS talking about the mammoth genome in that statement, that STILL doesn't imply "There will be no resurrections of the mammoth" i.e. of the mammoth genome. That's because he wasn't talking about ALL regions of the genome but only some parts; more specifically those parts that contain many repeating units, which by the way don't normally code for anything much! The words "those regions contain lots of repetitive sequences" don't mean "all regions". Again, you don't seem to understand plain simple English.

And that's not even to mention the fact it would make sense for him to imply the mammoth genome cannot be sequence and that's because it is well known news in science that it HAS ALREADY been sequenced!;
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081119140712.htm
"... The scientists sequenced the genome of the woolly mammoth,..."
So if "There will be no resurrections of the mammoth." i.e. mammoth genome is your personal ignorant layperson opinion, you are yet again wrong.

@metal-brain said
There will be no resurrections of the mammoth.
Nothing that cool here.

LOL.

Your comment reminds me of a time I was at a science museum with my kids and we were "excavating" the whole full-sized skeletons of dinosaurs that were in this giant sand pit with shovels and brooms. The kids loved it. "Looks like a giant tooth, I think I found the skull." Then this one kid came over with this really excited look on his face, started digging and then stopped. He looked down and said "these aren't even REAL dinosaur bones. What a waste of my time!" and he threw down the shovel and stormed away.

@wildgrass said
LOL.

Your comment reminds me of a time I was at a science museum with my kids and we were "excavating" the whole full-sized skeletons of dinosaurs that were in this giant sand pit with shovels and brooms. The kids loved it. "Looks like a giant tooth, I think I found the skull." Then this one kid came over with this really excited look on his face, started digging and the ...[text shortened]... t even REAL dinosaur bones. What a waste of my time!" and he threw down the shovel and stormed away.

That is a stupid comparison.
You put an exclamation mark in your thread title like it was something to be super exited about. You don't even know they have the right sequences in order. As you already pointed out, that is a near impossible task.

Even the sequence itself is questionable unless some of your previous statements are incorrect.

@humy said
If THAT is what you thought he just said there in that statement, you don't understand plain simple English and are even more stupid than I thought.
Nothing he said in that statement implies "There will be no resurrections of the mammoth" i.e. of the mammoth genome.
Just for starters he was talking about the HUMAN genome in that statement, NOT mammoth. Reminder;
"..."Interes ...[text shortened]... mammoth." i.e. mammoth genome is your personal ignorant layperson opinion, you are yet again wrong.

9 edits? You must be very rattled.