Wildlife Evolution and Behavior
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute - Florida Atlantic University
Ancient DNA Facility
Time travel in the genomics age - Understanding the past is often the key to interpreting the present and to effectively predicting the future.
From the inherent desire to learn more about our own origins to the pressing societal need to extend the timeline of scientific enquiry in order to better understand the processes of the natural world, from evolution to climate change, and their impacts on all forms of life, the field of molecular genetics using Ancient DNA is opening up new horizons.
Like many of you reading this, we have so many questions about the past. If only we could go back in time and learn about life thousands of years ago, or even just decades ago just before the current period of dramatic warming! Well, we may not have a Tardis, but we do have the next best thing:
An Ancient DNA Facility
aDNA of marine mammals: currently, we have a number of projects focused on getting DNA out of whale bones and teeth.
We've been working with beluga bones from locations in Alaska where these whales once occurred in large numbers and now are rarely seen to see if the genetic signal from these two time periods can shed light on what happened: is the original population extinct or are the whales we see today a remnant of that original population?
