Ancient DNA

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Ostelogical analysis is a very important process in understand our past. There are so many things that bones could tell us; the range of knowledge is great, we can determine where the remains came from their approximate age, their sex, their diet and even their death. There are so many different kinds of analysis that can be done from using ancient DNA to analyzing Stable Isotopes. Analysis of Ancient DNA hold an important key to solving the mystery of history. Using ancient DNA connections of kinship and sex can be determined.
To understand how ancient DNA can lead to kinship one must first understand DNA. DNA is the essence of life. It determines everything about who we are from what our hair color will be to how tall we’ll be. DNA every cell in the human body contains a copy of DNA. DNA is made up of four nucleotide. Theses Nucleotides are adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine (A, G,T, and C). They are arranged in pairs where adenine is always with thymine and guanine and cytosine are always paired together. They are linked together with a hydrogen bond. (Mays, 2010).
There are two types of DNA used in studying ancient DNA, chromosomal and mitochondrial. Chromosomal DNA is present in chromosomes with in the nucleus of the cell. It is the larger of the two types, in terms of amount of nucleotides. Then there is mitochondrial DNA comes from the mitochondria of the cell. The mitochondria is an organelle of the cell that produces energy and contains its own DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA is relatively short, only 16 569 bp long, and codes for just 37 genes. It has been completely sequenced (the order of the bases has been worked out) and is very well studied and understood by molecular biologists. There are about 800 m...

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...ned that seven of the babies were female and 5 were male. With this evidence the hypothesis that this infanticide was driven by gender importance to be wrong. (Hassan/Brown/Eyers/Brown/Mays,2014). Without the use of DNA analysis it would have been very difficult to identify the infant remains.

Another application is to determine kinship of the remains. Kinship is the relationship between individuals and groups. Determining kinship could be vital in returning Native American remains back to the natives. However the majority of Native Americans do not want any more desecration done to the bones of their ancestors.
Remains in the Merovingian necropolis were studied to determine whether there was any kinship among them. DNA analysis was conducted, two methods were used. STR and mitochondrial DNA. With mitochondrial DNA only the maternal lineage can be determined.

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