Publication Date:
1994-06-17
Description:
An approximately 5000-year-old mummified human body was recently found in the Tyrolean Alps. The DNA from tissue samples of this Late Neolithic individual, the so-called "Ice Man," has been extracted and analyzed. The number of DNA molecules surviving in the tissue was on the order of 10 genome equivalents per gram of tissue, which meant the only multi-copy sequences could be analyzed. The degradation of the DNA made the enzymatic amplification of mitochondrial DNA fragments of more than 100 to 200 base pairs difficult. One DNA sequence of a hypervariable segment of the mitochondrial control region was determined independently in two different laboratories from internal samples of the body. This sequence showed that the mitochondrial type of the Ice Man fits into the genetic variation of contemporary Europeans and that it was most closely related to mitochondrial types determined from central and northern European populations.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Handt, O -- Richards, M -- Trommsdorff, M -- Kilger, C -- Simanainen, J -- Georgiev, O -- Bauer, K -- Stone, A -- Hedges, R -- Schaffner, W -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1994 Jun 17;264(5166):1775-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Zoology, University of Munich, Germany.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8209259" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Austria
;
Base Sequence
;
Biological Evolution
;
Bone and Bones/chemistry
;
Connective Tissue/chemistry
;
DNA, Mitochondrial/chemistry/*genetics
;
Europe
;
Freezing
;
History, Ancient
;
Hominidae/*genetics
;
Humans
;
Male
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
*Mummies
;
Muscles/chemistry
;
Polymerase Chain Reaction
;
Sequence Analysis, DNA
;
Templates, Genetic
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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