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Multiplex amplification of the mammoth mitochondrial genome and the evolution of Elephantidae

Nature volume 439, pages 724–727 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

In studying the genomes of extinct species, two principal limitations are typically the small quantities of endogenous ancient DNA and its degraded condition1, even though products of up to 1,600 base pairs (bp) have been amplified in rare cases2. Using small overlapping polymerase chain reaction products, longer stretches of sequences or even whole mitochondrial genomes3,4 can be reconstructed, but this approach is limited by the number of amplifications that can be performed from rare samples. Thus, even from well-studied Pleistocene species such as mammoths, ground sloths and cave bears, no DNA sequences of more than about 1,000 bp have been reconstructed5,6,7. Here we report the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the Pleistocene woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius. We used about 200 mg of bone and a new approach that allows the simultaneous retrieval of multiple sequences from small amounts of degraded DNA. Our phylogenetic analyses show that the mammoth was more closely related to the Asian than to the African elephant. However, the divergence of mammoth, African and Asian elephants occurred over a short time, corresponding to only about 7% of the total length of the phylogenetic tree for the three evolutionary lineages.

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Figure 1: Map of the mammoth mitochondrial genome.
Figure 2: Principle of the multiplex approach and typical results.
Figure 3: Comparison of three-species trees.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the members of our laboratories for discussions and support, G. Khlopatchev for providing the mammoth bone and K. Finstermeier for help with figure design. This work was supported by the Max Planck Society. J.L.P. and M.S. were supported by an NIH grant (to M.S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Johannes Krause, Svante Pääbo & Michael Hofreiter

  2. MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, CB2 2QH, Cambridge, UK

    Paul H. Dear & Helen Spriggs

  3. Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, California, 94720-3140, Berkeley, USA

    Joshua L. Pollack & Montgomery Slatkin

  4. Department of Biology, University College London, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Ian Barnes & Adrian M. Lister

  5. WE Informatik, Heinrich Heine Universität, Universitätsstr. 1, D-40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Ingo Ebersberger

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  1. Johannes Krause
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Correspondence to Michael Hofreiter.

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Competing interests

The complete mammoth mitochondrial DNA sequence has been deposited in GenBank under accession number DQ188829. Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods

Full discription of methods and analysis used in this study. (DOC 142 kb)

Supplementary Table

Table of all primers used in Multiplex PCR. (DOC 149 kb)

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Krause, J., Dear, P., Pollack, J. et al. Multiplex amplification of the mammoth mitochondrial genome and the evolution of Elephantidae. Nature 439, 724–727 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04432

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