Poinar, Hendrik N.; Schwarz, Carsten; Qi, Ji; Shapiro, Beth; MacPhee, Ross D. E.; Buigues, Bernard; Tikhonov, Alexei; Huson, Daniel H.; Tomsho, Lynn P.; Auch, Alexander; Rampp, Markus; Miller, Webb; Schuster, Stephan C.

Science (Washington, DC, United States) (2006), 311(5759), 392-394 CODEN: SCIEAS; ISSN: 0036-8075. English.

We sequenced 28 million base pairs of DNA in a metagenomics approach, using a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) sample from Siberia. As a result of exceptional sample preservation and the use of a recently developed emulsion polymerase chain reaction and pyrosequencing technique, 13 million base pairs (45.4%) of the sequencing reads were identified as mammoth DNA. Sequence identity between our data and African elephant (Loxodonta africana) was 98.55%, consistent with a paleontol. based divergence date of 5 to 6 million years. The sample includes a surprisingly small diversity of environmental DNAs. The high percentage of endogenous DNA recoverable from this single mammoth would allow for completion of its genome, unleashing the field of paleogenomics.