Ancient DNA from 120-Million-Year-Old Lycoptera Fossils Reveals Evolutionary Insights
Abstract
High quality ancient DNA (aDNA) is essential for molecular paleontology. Due to DNA degradation and contamination by environmental DNA (eDNA), current research is limited to fossils less than 1 million years old. The study successfully extracted DNA from Lycoptera davidi fossils from the Early Cretaceous period, dating 120 million years ago. Using high-throughput sequencing, 1,258,901 DNA sequences were obtained. We established a rigorous protocol known as the mega screen method. Using this method, we identified 243 original in situ DNA (oriDNA) sequences, likely from the Lycoptera genome. These sequences have an average length of over 100 base pairs and show no signs of deamination. Additionally, 10 transposase coding sequences were discovered, shedding light on a unique self-renewal mechanism in the genome. This study provides valuable DNA data for understanding ancient fish evolution and advances paleontological research.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2412.06521,
title = {Ancient DNA from 120-Million-Year-Old Lycoptera Fossils Reveals Evolutionary Insights},
author = {Wan-Qian Zhao and Zhan-Yong Guo and Zeng-Yuan Tian and Tong-Fu Su and Gang-Qiang Cao and Zi-Xin Qi and Tian-Cang Qin and Wei Zhou and Jin-Yu Yang and Ming-Jie Chen and Xin-Ge Zhang and Chun-Yan Zhou and Chuan-Jia Zhu and Meng-Fei Tang and Di Wu and Mei-Rong Song and Yu-Qi Guo and Li-You Qiu and Fei Liang and Mei-Jun Li and Jun-Hui Geng and Li-Juan Zhao and Shu-Jie Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.06521},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
14 pages,3 Figures