History of Ancient DNA Studies
Arguably the first aDNA study was in 1984, with a publication by Russ Higuchi and colleagues at Berkeley that was to revolutionise the scope of molecular biology. It reported that traces of DNA from a museum specimen of the Quagga not only remained in the specimen over 150 years after the death of the individual, but could be extracted and sequenced. Over the next two years, through investigations into natural and artificially mummified specimens, Svante Pääbo confirmed that this phenomenon was not limited to relatively recent museum specimens, but could apparently be replicated in a range of mummified human samples that dated as far back as several thousand years (Pääbo 1985a; Pääbo 1985b; Pääbo1986). Nevertheless, the laborious processes that were required at that time to sequence such DNA (through bacterial cloning) were an effective brake on the development of the field of ancient DNA (aDNA). However, with the development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in the late 1980s the field was presented with the ability to rapidly progress.
Double primer PCR amplification of aDNA (jumping-PCR) can produce highly-skewed and non-authentic sequence artifacts. Multiple primer, nested PCR strategy was used to overcome those shortcomings.
Single primer extension (abr. SPEX) amplification was introduced in 2007 to address post mortem DNA modification damage.
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