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Published on: July 3, 2016
Analysis of ancient DNA from coprolites: a perspective with random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain
Alena M Iñiguez1, Adauto Araújo, Luiz Fernando Ferreira
1Laboratório de Genética Molecular de Microorganismos, Departamento de Genética, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz, Av. Brasil 4365, 21045-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. alena@ioc.fiocruz.br
Abstract:
The aim of this work was to determine approaches that would improve the quality of ancient DNA (aDNA) present in coprolites to enhance the possibility of success in retrieving specific sequence targets. We worked with coprolites from South American archaeological sites in Brazil and Chile dating up to 7,000 years ago. Using established protocols for aDNA extraction we obtained samples showing high degradation as usually happens with this kind of material. The reconstructive polymerization pretreatment was essential to overcome the DNA degradation and the serial dilutions helped with to prevent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) inhibitors. Moreover, the random amplified polymorphic DNA-PCR has been shown to be a reliable technique for further experiments to recover specific aDNA sequences.
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