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To: Nebullis
If a Bison is only 1 acid different from a cow even though a million years separates them, it is not a very precise test.

A couple of comments. The precision seems to be quite good. The particular protein, osteocalcin, may not be very informative or specific for short time-frames, such as 55,000 years in the case of the bison, but it will be informative for long time frames. Can you see now how that can be a useful way of extracting more information from ancient fossils?

Also, they only compared one, single protein! I wonder how many different proteins they will be able to recover from fossils.

54 posted on 11/13/2002 10:49:07 PM PST by jennyp
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To: jennyp
I wonder how many different proteins they will be able to recover from fossils.

Most proteins are recoverable for about 100,000 years (at cold temperatures). Osteocalcin is a bit unique, but they may find a few other proteins like that.

58 posted on 11/14/2002 5:47:40 AM PST by Nebullis
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