Two pieces of the 700,000-year-old horse bone used for sequencingLUDOVIC ORLANDOResearchers have generated a complete genome sequence from the bone of a horse that lived roughly 700,000 years ago, according to a study published today (June 26) in Nature. The data represent the oldest whole genome ever sequenced, almost 10 times older than the previous record—the genome of a 80,000-year-old hominid from the Denisova cave in Siberia. The genome has also provided new perspective on several aspects of horse evolution.
The study offers “the tantalizing proposition that complete genomes several millions of years old may be recoverable, given the right environmental conditions,” wrote David Lambert of Griffith University in Australia and Craig Millar of the University of Auckland, Zealand, in an accompanying commentary.
Indeed, even in temperate environments it may be possible to recover DNA that is half a million years old, said lead author Ludovic Orlando of the Center for GeoGenetics in Copenhagen, Denmark, speaking at a press conference held at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Helsinki, Finland. That opens up the possibility of getting genomic information from ancestral human specimens like Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus.
“Such genomic information, in combination with the Denisovan and Neanderthal genomes, would undoubtedly shed light ...
