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McMaster Ancient DNA News

Complete Columbian mammoth mitogenome suggests interbreeding with woolly mammoths

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.
May 31, 2011

Quantitative Assessment of the Sensitivity of Various Commercial Reverse Transcriptases Based on Armored HIV RNA

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.
Nov 30, 2010

Comparison of methods in the recovery of nucleic acids from archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded autopsy tissues

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.
Jan 15, 2010

A quantitative approach to detect and overcome PCR inhibition in ancient DNA extracts

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.
Sep 11, 2009

Time-Dependency of Molecular Rates in Ancient DNA Datasets, a Sampling Artifact?

Here we examine how a variety of factors (including calibration methods, sequence length, etc) affect divergence estimates in BEAST.
Jul 01, 2009

Darwin 2009 celebration in France

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.
Jun 12, 2009

Evoltree Ancient DNA Workshop

Regis participated in the Evoltree aDNA workshop in Borrowdale, UK May 4th to 7th.
May 07, 2009

Biotechnology Initiative Lectures

Régis Debruyne took part to the Biotechnology Initiative Lectures of the CBERC, which took place in the McLeod auditorium of the University of Toronto.
Apr 15, 2009

Agouti sequence polymorphism in coyotes and specific sequence differences from wolves and dogs

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.
Jul 13, 2007