Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Preserve your DNA for a thousands of years?

D4RR3N - 17-1-2019 at 10:35

Is there a low tec method of preserving dna, ie not requiring cryogenics?
If dna can be extracted from the marrow or tooth of an ancient Egyptian mummy then I guess the possibility is there. The thing that comes to mind is amber and how well it can preserve a one million years old insect.

How would you go about it? No electricity allowed !

Edit:

Dna damage is caused by heat, ionising radiation, UV radiation and oxidisation. I guess this dna sample would then have to be in a shielded capsule submersed in a powerful antioxidant substance?



[Edited on 17-1-2019 by D4RR3N]

wg48 - 17-1-2019 at 11:34

The traditional low tech method is reasonably effective for 50% of your DNA and very enjoyable from what I can remember. Initially not expensive if you have the looks or a serous bank balance. Of cause the child support will not be cheap in the long run LOL.

How about donating to a sperm bank or egg bank if they exist LOLA

Σldritch - 17-1-2019 at 13:02

You can get close to a hundred percent if you take a page out of Genghis Khans book but of course you may not want to share it because that would diminish its astronomical value. There is, however, a very slightly more modern method without that flaw:

https://www.polar-quest.com/trips/antarctica/fly-to-the-sout...

[Edited on 17-1-2019 by Σldritch]

mayko - 17-1-2019 at 13:37

Quote: Originally posted by D4RR3N  
Is there a low tec method of preserving dna, ie not requiring cryogenics?
If dna can be extracted from the marrow or tooth of an ancient Egyptian mummy then I guess the possibility is there.


The *storage* of DNA is low-tech in that case, but the *retrieval* is something else entirely! It often involves meticulous work in a clean room to avoid operator contamination, followed by high-throughput sequencing (~2008 technology) and heaps of computational power to sift out bacterial contamination. Degradation means that the DNA will be highly fragmented, which isn't too much of a problem with modern sequencing technology, but it also causes a deamination of cytosine bases into thymine. This distorts the recovered sequence and might mean you have to throw out a lot of the data you do get! (When the neanderthal genome was first sequenced, the cytosine deamination problem was so severe that they just ignored transitions entirely and calculated genetic divergence from modern human based on transversions only)





Attachment: A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome.pdf (3.4MB)
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D4RR3N - 17-1-2019 at 14:55

Quote: Originally posted by wg48  
The traditional low tech method is reasonably effective for 50% of your DNA and very enjoyable from what I can remember. Initially not expensive if you have the looks or a serous bank balance. Of cause the child support will not be cheap in the long run LOL.

How about donating to a sperm bank or egg bank if they exist LOLA


Well it is true that I am extremely good looking, how about you?...No! ah not to worry LOLA



I was thinking, imagine humans one million years in the future...do you think they will be like us genetically?

What do you think they would do if they found intact a container containing ancient human dna?

[Edited on 17-1-2019 by D4RR3N]