Mitochondria is 'so 1980s' says scientist

HAMILTON, Ontario, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A McMaster University geneticist in Hamilton, Ontario, has mapped a portion of the woolly mammoth's genome.

Hendrik Poinar, a molecular evolutionary geneticist, collaborated with genome researchers at Penn State University and the American Museum of Natural History.

The discovery, said Poinar, surpasses a study published Thursday by the journal Nature that also concerns the woolly mammoth.

Poinar said his research involves the vital nuclear DNA within a mammoth, rather than the lesser mitochondria, on which the Nature study is based.

"Mitochondria is so 1980s," said Poinar. "It only allows you to look at the maternal side of evolution."

The discovery occurred when Poinar extracted DNA from a well-preserved mammoth specimen found in the Siberian permafrost and sent it to research colleagues at Penn State. Within hours, his colleagues reported they had sequenced 30 million base pairs, about one percent of the entire mammoth genome.

At that rate, it will take a year to map the entire genome, said Poinar. Funding is currently being sought for the completion of the project.

Woolly mammoths became extinct 10,000 years ago.

Poinar's study appears this week in Science.