Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:1637-1639 (2002)
© 2002 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
The Paradox of the "Ancient" Bacterium Which Contains "Modern" Protein-Coding Genes
*Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Genetics,
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology, University of Arizona; and
Department of Biology, West Chester University
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The isolation of microorganisms from ancient materials and the verification that they are as old as the materials from which they were isolated continue to be areas of controversy. Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels. This fact has historically been used by critics to argue that these isolates are not ancient but are modern contaminants introduced either naturally after formation of the surrounding material (for further details, see Hazen and Roeder 2001
and the reply by Powers, Vreeland, and Rosenzweig 2001
) or because of flaws in the methodology of sample isolation (reviewed recently in Vreeland and Rosenzweig 2002
). Such criticism has been addressed experimentally by the development of highly rigorous protocols for sample selection, surface sterilization, and contamination detection and control procedures. Using the most scrupulous and well-documented sampling procedures and contamination-protection techniques