World's 'oldest' known DNA discovered

[n2doc]

DNA from 419-million-year-old bacteria may have belonged to the descendants of the world's first life forms.

By Michael Reilly | Thu Dec 17, 2009 07:00 AM ET

It won't make Jurassic Park a reality, but scientists have discovered 419 million-year-old DNA intact inside ancient salt deposits.

The genetic material, the oldest ever found, belongs to salt-loving bacteria whose ancestors may have been among the first life forms on Earth.

Scientists have previously recovered similar genetic material from the Michigan Basin, the same region where the latest discovery was made. But the DNA was so similar to that of modern microbes that many scientists believed the samples had been contaminated.

Not so this time around.

A team of researchers led by Jong Soo Park of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, found six segments of identical DNA that have never been seen before by science. Their work appears in the December issue of the journal Geobiology.

"We went back and collected DNA sequences from all known halophilic bacteria and compared them to what we had," Russell Vreeland of West Chester University in Pennsylvania said. "These six pieces were unique."

more:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oldest-dna-bacteria-discovered.html

[LiberalEsto]

1. Great great great gazillion Grandma!

"...salt-loving bacteria whose ancestors may have been among the first life forms on Earth."

It HAS to be an ancestress of ours. My daughters LOVE salt.

[roguevalley]

6. SNICKER! Awesome post.

[izquierdista]

2. I'm pretty sure mine does too.

What would be more surprising is if they found some DNA that didn't descend from the world's first life forms.

[endless october]

3. kr

good article.

[laconicsax]

4. We're all descendants of the world's first life-forms, no?

:shrug:

[Odin2005]

5. WOW!!!

[cowcommander]

7. Could bacteria live for millions of years?

I remember reading somewhere about bacteria being resurrected from ice core samples, but can they live that long?

[n2doc]

8. Nobody really knows

In some dormant state, maybe. But here the issue is more that these bacteria were isolated from the outside world for that long, just living very slowly.