THE OLDEST DNA EVER SEQUENCED

During my PhD, I got an extraordinary opportunity to try to extract DNA from mammoth teeth that were geologically dated to be 1 million years old. To my and everyone's surprise, they did have DNA and we did manage to extract a lot of genomic information for three of the mammoths. Once we had the data, we could perform molecular dating, both using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, which turned out to be reassuringly consistent with the age estimates from the stratigraphy. This and further analyses confirmed that we sequenced DNA more than 1 million years old, in other words, the oldest DNA ever recovered.

My colleagues at the Center for Palaeogenetics, Tom van der Valk and David Díez-del-Molino did all the heavy lifting on the analytical part. However, we wanted to present the data knowing that we tested everything thoroughly, and therefore, we joined forces with some of the best scientists in the field of ancient DNA research. Being able to collaborate with these smart and brilliant people was an amazing experience and it shows, as the outcomes of the project were published in Nature.