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Oxford University Press, Nucleic Acids Research, 6(38), p. e87-e87, 2009

DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkp1163

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Removal of deaminated cytosines and detection of in vivo methylation in ancient DNA

Journal article published in 2009 by Adrian W. Briggs, Udo Stenzel, Matthias Meyer, Johannes Krause, Martin Kircher ORCID, Svante Pääbo
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

DNA sequences determined from ancient organisms have high error rates, primarily due to uracil bases created by cytosine deamination. We use synthetic oligonucleotides, as well as DNA extracted from mammoth and Neandertal remains, to show that treatment with uracil–DNA–glycosylase and endonuclease VIII removes uracil residues from ancient DNA and repairs most of the resulting abasic sites, leaving undamaged parts of the DNA fragments intact. Neandertal DNA sequences determined with this protocol have greatly increased accuracy. In addition, our results demonstrate that Neandertal DNA retains in vivo patterns of CpG methylation, potentially allowing future studies of gene inactivation and imprinting in ancient organisms.