Talk:Paleogenetics

Gene studies on origins and migrations
There have been many reports in the media about gene studies on origins and migrations of humans and ethnic groups, as well as of dogs, cats, bacteria, you name it. it would be good if some knowledgeable Wikipedians could start an article listing them, which could be expanded as more studies are made.-Richard Peterson130.86.14.82 (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The field appears to overlap with archaeogenetics quite a bit, explaining the confusion. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:23, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

"Founder"
shouldn't Allan Wilson also be mentioned as a founder here? Spettro9 (talk) 16:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Now added. Boghog (talk) 20:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Question!
Is there a distinction biomolecular archaeology and palaeogenetics? For the time being, I've created and set up redirects from biomolecular archaeology/archeology to this page. --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 10:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * A brief look seems to indicate that biomolecular archaeology seems to be a bit broader. --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 10:45, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The lead definition is contrary to the usage in the given source.
The first sentence now contains a definition and a reference:
 * Paleogenetics is the study of the past through the examination of preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organisms.

This is rather bad. I just spent some hours briefly looking through the cited work by Benner, Sassi, and Gaucher (infra called BSG; it was much too long to read in full in one evening). It is quite interesting; but it is not at all about "the study of the past through the examination of preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organisms". It has much more to do with Zuckerkandl's and Pauling's idea of reconstructing palaeontological proteines from analysing variations for these among extant species; but it is mostly about first reconstructing DNA sequences rather than the proteines, but then employing the reconstructed genes for constructing the proteines, and then study the effects of these proteines in vitro. (However, BSG is a survey article, and also refers works where what it calls "experimental paleogenomics" is done in vivo or in silico.) This then can be used to confirm (or refute) theories of how and why certain biochemical features evolved.

The works mentioned in BSG mostly yield hypthetical genes from much older times than those where preserved genetic material could be identified. An extreme example is the reconstruction of certain bacterial proteines, which then were tested with respect to the temperatures they were most suited for. For the oldest one, this turned out to be 65 C° (approx. 150 F°), indicating that this would have been the average temperature under which these ancestral bacteria thrived. On the other hand, the methods for these constructions are much more unsure (and probably much more error-prone) than the ones done for e. neanderthals or mammuts by means of DNA remains.

I think that it is reasonable to call both the recontruction of genes from archaeological material (as in Pääbo's work) and that from recent organisms "paleogenetics", as also seems to be done. The original article version from 2005 by instead contained the definition
 * Paleogenetics is the application of genetics to paleontology,

which does cover both variants, but is a bit vague. The present definition was introduced in 2012 by here, but without reference. You introduced the (IMHO misleading) reference here, the same year. Do you remember anything of this, in spite of it being ten years ago? JoergenB (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't remember exactly my thought on this topic ten years ago, but I believe I was simply trying to supply a secondary source to support the lead sentence. After more carefully reading the source, it is clear that  is relevant to Ancestral sequence reconstruction, but not this article.  I will try to locate a more relevant secondary source. Boghog (talk) 06:34, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, the BSG use the term paleogenetics, and that article is not extremely old; so, if you do, we at the very least should have a hatnote to ancestral sequence reconstruction. (Besides, factually, also Pääbo's et aal. work mainly is a kind of reconstruction, since they do not in general succeed to recover entire DNA molecules, I think.) JoergenB (talk) 13:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)