The trouble with sequencing dinosaur DNA is that you have to find some first -- absent refrigeration it tends to go off if left on the fossil shelf for more than an eon or two.
Sequencing proteins is another matter. Dried gelatin , AKA collagen glue . can last for ages. Digging into the interior of the femur of a less than usually rotten tempered T. Rex that paleontologists found in a 68 million year old sandstone formation in Montana , molecular biologists have found still supplecollagen.Their success in sequencing its amino acids could help push the limit of reptile DNA recovery and amplification back in time towards the age of the dinosaurs as techniques evolve.
The previous record for protein sequence recovery was set by the same grisly sort of stringy connective tissue from a roughly quarter million year old mammoth. Seven fragments of protein sequence have been gleaned from the T. rex fossil . This is a long way short of Jurassic Park, which may be just as well. Clawing through the limited information on collagen sequences available , the authors from the American Museum of Natural History have so far determined that T Rex gristle resembles the collagen of chickens.
No lawyers were devoured in conducting the research thus far published, and evidencing professional courtesy , the Board Dining Room of the AMNH has yet to put a plate of reconstituted T.Rex consomme' in front of the General Counsel.
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