January 15th, 2014, 02:25 PM
It occurred to me the other day that surely the structure of DNA should also be in fossils, and that this leads up to the grater shape of the organism that we currently see.Could this be correct? Is there technology available these days to 'take a picture' of DNA? As far as I am aware nothing has been done yet, apart from the fact that DNA is considered to be very knotted (please correct me if I am wrong) - so could this be done at all?
You mean an impression of DNA in the minerals which form the fossils?
DNA is a very fragile molecule, and under most circumstances does not survive beyond 100,000 years
under exceptional circumstances older DNA has been found (e.g. Leg bone gives up oldest human DNA, and Ancient horse bone yields oldest DNA sequence)
a report in Nature attributed a half-life of 521 years for DNA (DNA has a 521-year half-life), so that's goodbye to any prospects of dino DNA or DNA from insects in amber
The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of −5 ºC, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years.
DNA is not a fragile molecule... DNA IS EXTREMELY STABLE...
Calling DNA fragile is like saying Bruce Lee was a pussy.
But i agree that the DNA will be gone in the dino's. But the DNA in their closest relatives is still there. Also Proteins could have survived it, as some pieces of mammoth hair/skin are still intact. Use the DNA from their closest relatives, and the proteins that they have, we could still recreate something.
If Einsteins theory of everything could have taken root. We could recreate the DNA, and turn back time by just checking out what it looks like now, and reversing time a few million years.
If only...
As with many organic molecules, it is fragile. if you take it out out of the ideal conditions of the body for any geologically appreciable amount of time it will crumble.
only when it resides in a living organism - after death it breaks down into ever smaller fragments until even the fragments are no longer usable for identificationOriginally Posted by Zwolver
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