Very old DNA

The verification of DNA sequences obtained from very old tissue sources as indeed ancient is a major point of discussion in the ancient DNA field. Proper controls and the use of the phylogenetic approach are the general methods employed for verification of the ancient DNA. Most studies have reported the recovery of extremely small amounts of nucleic acids which are sheared into rather small fragments. In addition, problems such as ‘PCR jumping’ can produce spurious sequence information. These observations suggest that random amplification techniques and the development of primers for highly informative but short target regions are essential for the further development of the ancient DNA field.