Scientists Sequence of Research for woolly mammoth genome

Scientists at Penn State are leaders of a team that is the first provide reports to the genome wide sequence of an extinct animal, according to Webb Miller, professor of biology and of computer science and engineering and one of the project two leaders. 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.
The researchers suspect that the full woolly mammoth genome is over four billion DNA bases, which they believe is the size of the modern day African elephants genome. Although their dataset consists of more than four billion DNA bases, only 3.3 billion of them a little over the size of the human genome currently can be assigned to the mammoth genome. Some of the remaining DNA bases may belong to the mammoth, but others could belong to other organisms, like bacteria and fungi, from the surrounding environment that had contaminated the sample.
The team sequenced the mammoth 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. By using hair, the scientists avoided problems that have bedeviled the sequencing of ancient DNA from bones because DNA from bacteria and fungi, which always are associated with ancient DNA, can more easily be removed from hair than from bones. Another advantage of using hair is that less damage occurs to ancient DNA in hair because the hair shaft encases the remnant DNA like a biological plastic, thus protecting it from degradation and exposure to the elements.
Only after the genome of the African elephant has been completed will we be able to make a final assessment about how much of the full woolly mammoth genome we have sequenced, said Miller. The team plans to finish sequencing the woolly mammoth’s genome when the project receives additional funding.