[HN Gopher] Woman's DNA discovered in 20k year old deer-tooth pe...
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Woman's DNA discovered in 20k year old deer-tooth pendant (2023)
Author : pseudolus
Score : 161 points
Date : 2025-03-07 13:30 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| userbinator wrote:
| _3 billion bases long[...]we were able to recover roughly 70 per
| cent_
|
| It's impressive how resilient DNA is as a data storage medium.
| That's the equivalent of ~500MB of raw data they've recovered, if
| my calculations are correct.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| When can I start storing passwords in mine?
| brianmaurer wrote:
| Sooner than you'd think!
| https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/dna-data-storage/
|
| (though passwords aren't a great application)
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Oh great when i get into old age not only will I forget my
| password but my DNA will have mutated to the point that it
| technically isn't my password any longer
| Y_Y wrote:
| Might be a poor idea if anyone who can collect and sequence
| your DNA gets your passwords.
| egillie wrote:
| All of my passwords are encoded in pi...somewhere
| magneticnorth wrote:
| Well, probably! But it hasn't actually been proven yet
| that pi is a "normal number" [0], though most
| mathematicians think it must be.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number#
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It's not necessary that pi be normal in order for it to
| contain every possible sequence. Sufficient, but not
| necessary.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That's a stronger claim anyhow. We'd merely need Pi to be
| a rich number, ... which hasn't been proven either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjunctive_sequence#Rich_n
| umb...
| Y_Y wrote:
| If the OP is anything like me, then they have no trust in
| number theory researchers and deliberately choose
| passwords like "141592" so they can be sure
| billforsternz wrote:
| I enjoy thinking about this. Not only is a sequence of
| digits encoding the complete works of Shakespeare in
| there somewhere, it's in there again. And again, an
| infinite number of times.
| Y_Y wrote:
| In my encoding I represent the works of Shakespeare by
| the digit 0, anything else by the digit 1 followed by its
| ASCII representation.
| rolandog wrote:
| Yeah, you'd be vulnerable to pepper shakers and divulging
| all your passwords in a sneeze.
| almosthere wrote:
| Why do you have all those eyeballs on your arm?
|
| Oh, that... yeah, they said I had a lot of special characters
| in my LinkedIn password, and this is the best way to encode
| those.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| They require at least one emoji and an uppercase character
| selcuka wrote:
| - Your password has expired. You must choose a new one.
|
| - Uh, oh. How am I going to see behind me, then?
| ryao wrote:
| You could likely store them in the junk DNA without much
| risk, as long as you avoid encoding sequences that are the
| start of coding regions. That said, if you managed to
| inject them into every cell of your body, this would be the
| biological equivalent of dropping pamphlets containing your
| passwords everywhere you go.
| epistasis wrote:
| You can order DNA sequences from all sorts of companies. IDT
| is by far one of the most popular, using classical
| biochemical means:
|
| https://www.idtdna.com/pages/products/genes-and-gene-
| fragmen...
|
| https://www.idtdna.com/pages/products/custom-dna-rna/dna-
| oli...
|
| And a newer player that uses tech from integrated circuit
| manufacturing (I think?) is Twist Biosciences:
|
| https://www.twistbioscience.com/twist-ordering-platform
|
| Retrieval of information has a bit of latency, however.
| gww wrote:
| They didn't sequence the whole human genome (~3 billion bases)
| for multiple reasons. I am not an expert on ancient DNA but I
| will try to explain the paper as best I can:
|
| 1. Contamination with other flora and fauna DNA 2. Relative low
| proportions of human DNA 3. The DNA is usually highly degraded,
| which limits the analyses to short read sequencing (in this
| case they used 76 bp reads). The halflife of human DNA is ~521
| years.
|
| To mitigate these problems they used multiple targeted
| approaches including one to isolate mitochondrial DNA, where
| they managed to sequence the whole ~16kb human mtDNA, where
| each base was covered by 62 sequencing reads on average (62x
| coverage).
|
| They used another to isolate specific regions containing single
| nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are DNA mismatches known
| to be related to ancient human DNA and humans. They targeted
| 470,724 single nucleotide polymorphisms of which 70% (336,429)
| were recovered.
|
| They did perform shotgun sequencing on all of the DNA isolated,
| but due to species assignment issues they again focused on
| fragments that contain diagnostic SNPs in these cases they only
| recovered a small number of SNPs per sample, again due to the
| relatively low proportion of human DNA and its degradation
| (20,526, 3,734, 124,862, 85,901, 34,756, 41,632, 34,677 and
| 72,992) as per the legend in figure 3.
| dexwiz wrote:
| That analysis makes me think of matching more than recovery.
| thangngoc89 wrote:
| "matching" is exactly how we do DNA sequencing right now.
| The current technology is called next generation sequencing
| (NGS), we multiply the DNA and perform matching digitally
| to construct the full DNA.
| vintermann wrote:
| It's quite fascinating. It's like if order to figure out
| the shape of a teacup, we generate thousands of identical
| copies, smash them all to rather small bits, and then try
| to count the different types of shards as a first step to
| piecing together one full copy. Impressive that it works.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's not fascinating; it's an endless source of trouble.
| We only do it because we don't have sequencers that
| produce extremely long (chromosome length) high quality
| reads, especially in sequences that contain a lot of
| repetition. This has been a source of errors and
| ambiguity for as long as we've used shotgun.
| gww wrote:
| This is a great analogy. One small change is that there
| are two ways to reassemble it. One is to try to blindly
| put the pieces together and fork a teacup (read assembly)
| vs trying to use a picture of the teacup to figure out
| where the pieces go (read alignment / mapping)
| sweeter wrote:
| Would it be possible to clone an ancient human being from
| DNA?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Probably not, not nearly enough material remained to make
| an accurate clone. The article mentions 70% recovery rate;
| according to the internet, humans share 98% of DNA with
| chimpanzees (and 35% with daffodils), so unless you have
| 100% or 99.9999% of the DNA, the clone will be imperfect at
| best and a Thing That Should Not Be at worst.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I think your ethical board would probably stop you first.
| kevincox wrote:
| Keep in mind that this is survivorship bias. The vast majority
| of DNA from this period has lots. Sure, there is tons that
| exists but we haven't found but without a doubt almost all of
| it has been lost.
|
| This is DNA that happened to be the right conditions to
| survive. It isn't so much that the medium is resilient but that
| if stored in the correct conditions it _can_ survive.
| Terr_ wrote:
| It makes me think about how many ancient ruins don't exist
| simply because the people nearby didn't see reason not to
| reuse all that convenient unowned pre-quarried rock.
|
| Even today, it's not a very compelling plea: "No, don't tear
| down the recently-abandoned building, it would look cool
| several hundred years after you die."
|
| So too on the microscopic label, if there are convenient
| molecules nobody else is using...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| "Spolia" is a fun architectural term for this sort of
| material reuse, particularly with the more interesting
| decorative pieces. Many of those stones taken from ancient
| buildings have become notable newer ancient buildings in
| their own right.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > It makes me think about how many ancient ruins don't
| exist simply because the people nearby didn't see reason
| not to reuse all that convenient unowned pre-quarried rock.
|
| In the case of Ostia near Rome, they mined it for building
| material until it became a malaria swamp. It wasn't drained
| until the 20th century. Around 20% of the workers draining
| the swap contracted malaria.
| biophysboy wrote:
| It's even more impressive when you compare it to rna, which
| "lives" minutes. Take away the pair strand, add a hydroxyl
| group and a uracil, and it's a totally different thing.
| bloqs wrote:
| Im fascinated, any noob friendly reading material?
| biophysboy wrote:
| Honestly, scientific papers. The pain of jargon will be
| less than the pain of a popsci book. Especially with all
| the tools to rewrite/summarize/search these days.
| skyyler wrote:
| Yes, but which ones? There are so many out there... It
| seems like you're educated on the subject, so you may be
| able to recommend good ones.
| biophysboy wrote:
| A good start would be the review articles listed here:
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=rna+half-
| life&hl=en&as_.... If there's a paywall, use sci-hub or
| check the lab's page for a pdf. I should caveat that
| there is no one rna half life, some live much longer
| skyyler wrote:
| It's ok if you don't have recommendations, but sending a
| google link is a bit out of pocket :(
| Waterluvian wrote:
| So this is how I should be storing family photos.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Thinking on how to save things long term is a fun exercise.
| If I were super rich and felt that highly of myself, I would
| totally build a monument to myself built to last the ages;
| elevated (against flooding), tonnes of erosion resistant
| rock, a library of all human knowledge in many different
| formats, sealed off. But with an exact copy near it for
| tourists.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| You've gotta have a series of timed vaults that give access
| to precious metals every few generations.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You'd find yourself in company with many religious
| organizations. The Mormon Church has a couple of records
| vault carved into the granite outside SLC, while the church
| of Scientology has 3 geographically separated primary
| vaults dug into the mountains (Petrolia and Creston CA, and
| a place in the desert outside Albuquerque).
| saagarjha wrote:
| In a sense your DNA _is_ your family photo.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > "It was clear that a human handled it..."
|
| Ah, science.
| jdiff wrote:
| There actually was human DNA in it so I don't know why we're
| scoffing as successful methods as if they're unreasonable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's like IT, gotta make sure you have the basics right like
| whether it's plugged in before you start with more advanced
| stuff.
| fortran77 wrote:
| My first thought, after reading the headine, was that the deer
| bit her.
| ursuscamp wrote:
| The article says that it belonged to a species of deer called
| "wapiti". Since I never heard of it, I looked it up and it's just
| an elk. Why didn't the article just say "elk" which is the much
| more common term?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Elk is pretty ambiguous -- it refers to different species
| depending on the context (in Europe, 'elk' refers to what in
| north America is called a moose. Wapiti is a name for what
| 'elk' refers to in North America). You get a similar problem
| with the words 'hawk' and 'buzzard'
| jhbadger wrote:
| And badger -- In Europe they are small adorable members of
| the _Meles_ genus. In the Americas, Africa, and Asia the word
| refers to larger and more aggressive animals in the _Taxidea_
| and _Mellivora_ genera that just look superficially like
| _Meles_.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| - Elk is ambiguous. There's an Elk/Wapiti in North America,
| Central Asia, and East Asia, and another species of deer
| referred to as an "Elk" by people in Eurasia, but which is
| known as a "Moose" in North America.
|
| - Because journalists these days don't have time to look these
| kinds of things up. The original paper only refers to it as
| wapiti/cervus canadensis/deer. If the whoever wrote that
| article _knew_ it refers to an elk, they 'd have pointed that
| out for the reader.
| bregma wrote:
| The wapiti is the animal on the reverse of the Canadian 25 cent
| definitive coin. Perhaps the folks who write the article are
| just educated and worldly.
| sitkack wrote:
| Send that to a consumer DNA analysis company and find her closest
| living relatives!
| bbarnett wrote:
| It's basically everyone!
| sitkack wrote:
| I know that person!
| theWreckluse wrote:
| Or, it could be no one at all!
| hackeraccount wrote:
| If you go back far enough (and I don't know if this is)
| isn't the answer always everyone or no one but never
| "some".
| mparnisari wrote:
| How did they know to explore this cave in particular? Blows my
| mind. Or was it by accident?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Denisova cave has been known for about 150 years or so. Back in
| the 1970s, the Soviet Union sent some archaeologists out to see
| what was in the cave. They found some upper paleolithic stuff
| (e.g. like what the article is about), as well as some
| mousterian stuff (very weird this far north and east). They did
| excavations over the next couple of decades and eventually,
| some of the dating/sequencing technology improved to the point
| where it could actually be used on the cave artifacts. That's
| when they discovered denisovans and immediately made the cave
| one of the most important archaeological sites on the planet.
| There's been no lack of funding since.
| metalman wrote:
| this is just the begining of DNA as a tool in archiology. Earlier
| work with densovian dna, showed not only a genetic profile,of
| indivuals, it showed a familial relationship, father/daughter.
| The implication is that we will start to get a clearer look into
| human migration patterns ,including tribal, and familial groups,
| which while interesting, will also be prone to every kind of
| abuse in the forwarding of various
| agendas,...racial,ethnic,religios, nationalistic. Makes me want
| to stir the pot sometimes, and feed back in a lurid
| interpretation of ancient DNA, proving, i dont know, how about
| our ancestors throwing off our alien overlords, but now the death
| star has activated and is beaming alien DNA data right into us
| from the 5G, but, but, (marketing angle), ....eating , "product
| xx" or product xy, strengthens your imune system and prevents the
| alien download from finishing. The real issue in my blathering,
| is that fiction is fighting an uphill battle, to be stranger than
| reality.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I thought that it was already established that we're descendant
| of the ancient astronauts from the 12 Colonies of Kobol, and
| that the "mitochondrial Eve" was a child of a human and a
| Cylon.
|
| (Part of me wishes to see this resurface as a bona fide
| religion, oblivious to the source material.)
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen
| again.
| neRok wrote:
| The article (which is from 2023 by the way) doesn't discuss the
| findings of the DNA analysis, so I went and looked up the
| original - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06035-2
|
| > _with estimates of present-day human and faunal contamination
| both below 1%. Comparisons with present-day human populations26
| using f3-statistics and D-statistics27,28 show high affinities to
| Native Americans (Extended Data Fig. 5). When projected into a
| principal component analysis with other ancient human individuals
| (Fig. 3c), DCP1 falls within a group of Ancient North Eurasian
| individuals from further east in Siberia, which includes the
| approximately 24 ka Mal'ta 1 and the approximately 17 ka Afontova
| Gora 3 individuals29,30. Both of these individuals are
| genetically closer to DCP1 than non-Ancient North Eurasian
| individuals when tested with D-statistics (Extended Data Fig.
| 6b), and all three show similar affinities to ancient Siberians
| and Native Americans with f3-statistics and D-statistics_
| jvandonsel wrote:
| ...and also showed that she had antlers.
|
| (Sorry, I couldn't resist)
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The cool and dry conditions in the cave have made it possible
| for scientists to recover preserved DNA left behind by ancient
| Denisovans, Neanderthals and humans, all of whom occupied the
| cave at different times over 40,000 years._
|
| That's a long time to have people live in a particular area
| generally, and a particular "home" in particular.
|
| AIUI, some of the oldest writing we have dates to Ur III at 2000
| BC, so that's 'only' 4000 years ago, or perhaps the Uruk period,
| which at 3500 BC, is 5500 years old:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_documents
|
| * https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/jesho_UR_14.pdf
|
| So the oldest document(s) we have are only about 1/10th how long
| this cave was occupied.
|
| Some of these time scales are mind-boggling.
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