Publication Date:
2002-03-23
Description:
Well-preserved subfossil bones of Adelie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, underlie existing and abandoned nesting colonies in Antarctica. These bones, dating back to more than 7000 years before the present, harbor some of the best-preserved ancient DNA yet discovered. From 96 radiocarbon-aged bones, we report large numbers of mitochondrial haplotypes, some of which appear to be extinct, given the 380 living birds sampled. We demonstrate DNA sequence evolution through time and estimate the rate of evolution of the hypervariable region I using a Markov chain Monte Carlo integration and a least-squares regression analysis. Our calculated rates of evolution are approximately two to seven times higher than previous indirect phylogenetic estimates.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lambert, D M -- Ritchie, P A -- Millar, C D -- Holland, B -- Drummond, A J -- Baroni, C -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2002 Mar 22;295(5563):2270-3.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Molecular BioSciences, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. D.M.Lambert@massey.ac.nz〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11910113" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Antarctic Regions
;
Birds/*genetics
;
Bone and Bones/metabolism
;
Calibration
;
Carbon Radioisotopes
;
DNA, Mitochondrial/*genetics/isolation & purification
;
Ecosystem
;
*Evolution, Molecular
;
Fossils
;
Haplotypes/genetics
;
Least-Squares Analysis
;
Markov Chains
;
Monte Carlo Method
;
Phylogeny
;
Polymerase Chain Reaction
;
Time Factors
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
