The discovery of two-million-year-old DNA marks the beginning of a “game-changing” new chapter in the study of evolution.
In the northern Greenland soil from the Ice Age, microscopic pieces of environmental DNA were discovered. The fragments were found to be one million years older than the previous record for DNA extracted from a Siberian mammoth bone by researchers using cutting-edge technology.
An ecosystem that has survived two million years of intense climate change has been mapped using ancient DNA. The findings, according to researchers, may aid in predicting the long-term environmental cost of current global warming.
A group of scientists under the direction of Professors Eske Willerslev and Kurt H. Kjaer produced the finding. At the University of Copenhagen, where Professor Kjr, a specialist in geology, is also based, Professor Willerslev serves as Director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre and is a Fellow of St. John’s College, University of Cambridge.
Today, Nature published the findings of the 41 viable samples that were discovered concealed in quartz and clay.
Professor Willerslev claims”Finally, a new chapter covering a million more years of history has been unlocked, and for the first time, we are able to directly examine the DNA of an ancient ecosystem.”
“DNA can decay quickly, but we’ve demonstrated that, given the appropriate conditions, we can go back further in time than anyone could have dared to dream.”
According to Professor Kjr”In sediment that had accumulated over 20,000 years, the ancient DNA samples were discovered buried deep.” “Eventually, the silt was stored under ice or permafrost, and, critically, it was not disturbed by people for two million years.”
The fragmentary samples, which were only a few millionths of a millimeter long, were taken from the Kbenhavn Formation, an Arctic Ocean sedimentary deposit nearly 100 meters thick located at the mouth of a fjord in Greenland’s far north.Greenland’s climate at the time ranged from being Arctic to temperate and was 10–17 °C warmer than it is now. In a little bay, the material accumulated one meter at a time.
Reindeer, hares, lemmings, birch and poplar trees, as well as other animals, plants, and microbes, were found to have left fossils. Even the extinct Mastodon, an Ice Age mammal, was discovered to have wandered as far as Greenland. Because of their known origins in North and Central America, it was formerly believed that the elephant-like animals’ range did not reach as far as Greenland.
40 researchers from Germany, Denmark, the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, the USA, and Denmark conducted a thorough investigation to uncover the mysteries of the DNA pieces. It was a laborious process since they first had to determine whether DNA was present in the quartz and clay and, if so, whether they could successfully separate the DNA from the silt to analyze it. Finally, the answer was affirmative. Each and every DNA fragment was compared with huge libraries of DNA that had been gathered from living animals, plants, and microbes. The DNA of trees, shrubs, birds, animals, and microorganisms started to take shape.
Many of the DNA pieces could only be connected at the genus level, while others came from species that could not be located in the DNA libraries of the animals, plants, and microbes that are still alive in the twenty-first century.
The two-million-year-old samples aid researchers in creating a picture of a previously unrecognized stage in the DNA history of a variety of currently extant species.
According to Professor Kjr”Because expeditions are costly, many of the samples were collected in 2006 while the team was in Greenland working on a different project, and they have been kept in storage ever since.”
“We have just recently been able to find and distinguish incredibly minute and degraded pieces of DNA in the soil samples due to the development of a new generation of DNA extraction and sequencing equipment.” It meant we could finally map an ecosystem that was two million years old.
The paper’s co-first author, assistant professor Mikkel W. Pedersen, who works at the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, said: “Because the climate appears to have been similar to the climate we expect on our planet in the future due to global warming, the Kap Kbenhavn ecosystem, which has no modern equivalent, existed at temperatures that were significantly higher than those we experience today.
How well species will be able to adjust to the new environment brought on by a major rise in temperature is one of the important considerations here. The information implies that more animals than previously believed may adapt to vastly different temperatures through evolution. The results, however, clearly indicate that they will require time to complete this. “Since the rate of current global warming means that creatures and species do not have that much time, the climate emergency still poses a serious threat to biodiversity and the entire planet; extinction for some species, including plants and trees, is imminent.”
The researchers discovered DNA from a variety of species, including bacteria and fungi, when studying the ancient DNA from the Kap Kbenhavn Formation, which they are now mapping. In a subsequent research paper, a full account of the biological interactions inside the former ecosystem at Greenland’s northernmost point between animals, plants, and single-cell organisms will be provided.
It is now believed that some of the two million-year-old plant DNA’s “tricks” may be exploited to help make some endangered species more resistant to a warming climate.
According to Professor Kjr”In order to live in a climate characterized by rising temperatures two million years ago, plants and trees developed a survival strategy.” Genetic engineering may be able to replicate this technique and save some plant and tree species from extinction. One of the reasons this scientific development is so important is that it may show how to make an effort to mitigate the catastrophic effects of global warming.
The discoveries from the Greenlandic Kap Kbenhavn Formation have ushered in a completely new era in DNA detection.
According to Professor Willerslev, “Since the material was deposited in Kap Kbenhavn, cold, dry circumstances have predominated for the majority of that time, which is ideal for DNA survival.” Clay may have maintained ancient DNA in warm, humid settings at sites identified in Africa, given that scientists have successfully retrieved ancient DNA from clay and quartz.
The possibilities are unlimited, but if we can start looking at ancient DNA in African clay grains, we might be able to learn ground-breaking things about how many different species came to be. We might even learn more about the first humans and their ancestors.
