McMaster Ancient DNA News

Here we report the first complete mitochondrial genomes of a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) and a North American Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). Evolutionary analysis shows that the Columbian mammoth sample sits within a subclade of North Americna Woolly mammoths, suggesting that the two species likely interbred at some point their evolutionary histories.

Here we report a systematic comparison of 11 commercially available reverse transciptases for cDNA synthesis. Our analysis reveals significant variation in the sesntivity of these enzymes with Accuscript and Superscript III ranking as the most sensitive and consistent between replicates.

Here we report a systematic comparison of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue kits for RNA and DNA extraction. Overall, TrimGen's WaxFree and phenol-chloroform methods recovered the largest DNA yields, while Ambion's RecoverAll kit recovered the largest quantity of amplifiable RNA.

PCR inhibition remains a consistent problem for PCR amplification, particular in situations when the target DNA is in low-abundance or heavily degraded. Here we report an analysis on the identification of PCR inhibition and some recommendations to circumvent/alleviate inhibition in degraded samples.

Here we examine how a variety of factors (including calibration methods, sequence length, etc) affect divergence estimates in BEAST.

Régis Debruyne had a recent opportunity to make use of his French at the colloque entitled "Cent Cinquante ans après l’Origine des espèces: du darwinisme de Darwin à l’évolutionnisme contemporain" of the Collège de France where he presented a talk about both the scientific and the mythologic part of resurrecting the woolly mammoth.

Regis participated in the Evoltree aDNA workshop in Borrowdale, UK May 4th to 7th.

Régis Debruyne took part to the Biotechnology Initiative Lectures of the CBERC, which took place in the McLeod auditorium of the University of Toronto.

Here we report an examination of the alleles found in Canadian wild canids (wolves and coyotes) for the Agouti locus. Our analysis revealed that the Agouti locus did not vary in wild canids from domesticated dogs, although differences were observed in the surrounding regions.