3 ms·
Not likely. According to the research I've seen, the half-life of DNA nucleotide bonds in fossilized samples is on the order of a few hundred thousand years. Bu
by teraflop 6y ago
Not likely. According to the research I've seen, the half-life of DNA nucleotide bonds in fossilized samples is on the order of a few hundred thousand years. But that's the half-life of each bond, which means sequences of non-trivial length will become fragmented much more quickly. After 110 million years, it seems very unlikely that anything sequenceable still exists, even in trace amounts.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.1745 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.174...
- epicureanideal 6y agoBut if they're fossilized, those broken bonds would still be roughly in the same locations, right? So not useful for sequencing, but maybe the information can still be recovered by some future not-yet-possible means.
- staticautomatic 6y agoCould someone knowledgeable in pchem explain how this works? I'm guessing that half of the substance doesn't deterministically decay after a specific amount of time. I imagine that the decay follows some probability distribution, which should mean some portion of the substance decays much faster or slower, right? Does some of it never decay at all?
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoSee link to previous discussion, posted above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913 Might help.
- starpilot 6y agoDNA doesn't have a "half-life," there's no consistent inverse exponential decay that continues in perpetuity. It's like saying what's the half-life of a steak? Degradation depends on conditions.