DNA From Teeth (Hey Jason!)


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20050824-9999-lz1c24tooth.html
August 24, 2005

ASHLAND, Ore. ? Paleontologist Timothy Heaton was used to finding 35,000-year-old
remains of brown bear, black bear, hoary marmot and antelope in On Your Knees Cave,
a tight opening tucked in the dense hemlocks of Alaska's vast Tongass National
Forest. But on the last day of excavation in 1996, as Heaton was filling a final
bag of sediment, he came upon something quite different.

A lower jaw. A pelvic bone. Obsidian worked into a spear point.
...
Since, the effort to tease clues from the 10,300-year-old remains ? the oldest ever
found in Alaska or Canada ? has involved myriad research laboratories, most recently
the Molecular Anthropology Lab at UC Davis.

A tooth from On Your Knees Cave Man ? wrapped in cotton and shipped via Federal
Express ? arrived there in 2003. Brian Kemp, a Ph.D. candidate, removed the tooth's
crown and hammered out a quarter-gram portion of root. He subjected it to bleach, a
decalcifying chemical and a protein-devouring enzyme. With a silica extraction, he
got the tooth's DNA to jump out of the solution.

With the same process forensic scientists use to link DNA to criminals, Kemp tricked
the purified DNA into copying itself millions of times. The resulting sequences ? the
oldest DNA ever extracted from human remains in the Americas ? revealed some of the
old man's secrets.

Kemp's analysis, which he will submit to Nature, confirmed the Ice Age remains as male
and established his maternal ancestry as Asian.

From differences in the genetic sequences, Kemp is now able to argue that the cave
man's DNA represents a new ancient lineage in North America. Comparing that DNA to
modern-day sequences, he also is suggesting changes to some scientists' estimates of
the time of the first migrations to the New World.
...
At the moment, Kemp is relating to a cup of coffee. He's joined by his peers: his
adviser, David Glenn Smith, the respected director of Davis' Molecular Anthropology
lab; Ripan Malhi and Jason Eshleman, former students of Smith's and partners in science
and business; and John McDonough, Smith's jovial lab manager.
...
.

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