Studying the genome of ancient mammoth remains has revealed the genomes of hundreds of different types of microbes that were present in the mammoth’s tissues when it was alive.

The ancient DNA can be found in teeth and bones and is a record of the host’s genome but also of that of the microbes that were present in the individual when it died.

DNA sequencing of genomes (OCR) is a powerful tool. Sequencing methods continue to be updated and are now faster and can analyse vast quantities of DNA (AQA). In this study hundreds of samples from a mammoth that is 1.1 million years old were tested. 310 microbes were identified in the samples.

These ancient microbes lived in the mammoth all that time ago. It is thought that some of these microbes would have been pathogenic. One microbe in particular is closely related to a pathogen that infects African elephants today. African and Asian elephants are the two species present today that are most closely related to the mammoths.

It’s difficult working with ancient DNA with the degraded genome having parts missing. PCR is a technique that can be used to amplify small sections of DNA to enable the DNA to be sequenced (AQA and OCR).

This research has many potential uses – it can potentially be used to identify pathogens that are present today – and maybe even the potential antigens they have (AQA) and therefore this contributes to epidemiology (OCR), but it mainly contributes to discovering evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships (OCR), to enhance our understanding of the evolution of species millions of years ago.

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Download the paper from Cell here