The Sykes / Sartori Report - Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project

[Guest]

Anybody got any links about any of this?

[southernyahoo]

From BFE............

Thanks for your email. My aim was to collect 20 samples with good provenance, and I now have exceeded this target. I will prioritise these and begin testing shortly. So the timetable is still on track, though I cannot say at this point when the results will be published, as i do not know what they will show.

Best regards, Bryan.

Bryan Sykes MA PhD DSc

Professor of Human Genetics

Wolfson College, Oxford,OX2 6UD

First comments were posted Oct. 31st. I presume the email was quite recent.

[Guest]

Hmmm...well, delays sometimes occur. That's true even for university professors. There's still no parallel to be drawn with Ketchum though.

[southernyahoo]

I think he'd better hope the new advancements can get DNA from the hair shafts. He seems to be doing that to get around contamination and degradation, but the hair shafts are reputedly like Kryptonite to the not so obsolete methods. Fahrenbach had trouble with it, and Ketchum reported the same thing on C2C. If there was going to be a big delay, this is what would be responsible.

[Guest]

That defies logic to me, DNA is DNA, it can either be sequenced or it simply isn't there.

[Guest BFSleuth]

I'm definitely no expert in DNA, but I believe that there were advances in terms of primers used to amplify the DNA. Sykes developed new methods or primers in order to sequence the Neanderthal DNA, and I believe Dr. Ketchum had to develop primers in order to sequence the samples she received. This might be some of the reason for delays in the Ketchum study, but I'm not sure whether Dr. Sykes may be privy to some of that information or not. Likely not, in which case he might need to reinvent the wheel.

It may really boil down to the scope of his study versus the scope of Dr. Ketchum's study, and how much of the genome needs to be sequenced.

[southernyahoo]

That defies logic to me, DNA is DNA, it can either be sequenced or it simply isn't there.

A perfectly good hair should have DNA, but the methods for getting DNA from hair shafts is different from getting it from tissue. There are different methods of extraction from hair shafts. Some work better than others and some require some technical tinkering.

http://www.protocol-online.org/biology-forums/posts/27390.html

http://www.isfg.org/files/61bebd1f8e4d5e47364077a5adee68b15529d225.02005824_896084102010.pdf

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_scientists_get_DNA_from_a_strand_of_hair

Sykes is likely to get mtDNA only without roots.

[Guest]

^But he also has at least one section of the Smeja Steak, according to reports, so hopefully we get at least one nuDNA analysis as well.

[Guest]

Thanks SY, but those sources are severely outdated. I know they have developed better ways to get DNA from hair without a root ball. Pubmed is a better source for current research.

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/22686607

Sleuth it's my understanding that you can use designated primers for any primate and pull DNA. I don't know why it would be necessary to develop specific primers unless it was for certain areas in the sequence. There isn't that much difference between all of us to warrant starting from scratch.

https://static.dna.g...ab_pro_3.11.pdf

http://www.hindawi.c...fg/2012/520732/

Edited November 3, 2012 by CTfoot

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Given Dr. Sykes reputation, I assume he really knows what he's doing.

[Guest]

Sykes isn't pure mainstream either. He has some streaks of hype, pushing theories already disproved by published studies.

He also made some false statements regarding haplotypes and which ones are normal in North America. He wrote a book on the disproven Solutrean hypothesis. He attributed haplotype X completely wrong.

November has come. Curious to see what does get released.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Woodswalker

[southernyahoo]

^But he also has at least one section of the Smeja Steak, according to reports, so hopefully we get at least one nuDNA analysis as well.

Potentially, and if he could get the same sequence from the hair shafts as he could get from the tissue then he could rule out contamination and or degradation. In a perfect world of coarse. Though this would be mtDNA from the shafts most likely, so he would only be able to compare it there. With no contamination, the the nuDNA would be more meaningful.

[Guest]

He also made some false statements regarding haplotypes and which ones are normal in North America. He wrote a book on the disproven Solutrean hypothesis. He attributed haplotype X completely wrong.

That question is still under vigorous debate, and far from "disproven".

[Guest]

Do we have any kind of idea of how any results will be presented?

For me, the worst case scenario is to conclude 'unknown source' for the samples.

Can we optimistically assume that Sykes will be able to - or is willing to - derive hominin ancestory from the results (assuming of course the tests prove negative for documented species)?

[southernyahoo]

I'm not sure what Sykes would put forth as a conclusion. Many geneticists have indicated that they would be very interested in unique DNA coming from the great ape branch of primates or hominids. Sykes has said that he would be able to recognize for instance a sequence that comes from Neanderthals and that he would probably acknowledge as an astounding finding, but for it to be completely new and uncatalogued he hasn't said. I'm sure it would go beyond the scope of his current study which is a scoop and screen sort of affair with limited funds.