Putative ancient microorganisms from amber nuggets

  1. Patricia Veiga Crespo
  2. Lucía Blasco
  3. Margarita Poza
  4. Tomás González Villa
Journal:
International microbiology: official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology

ISSN: 1618-1905

Year of publication: 2007

Volume: 10

Issue: 2

Pages: 117-122

Type: Article

More publications in: International microbiology: official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology

Abstract

Evolutionary microbiology studies based on the isolation of ancient DNA and/or microbial samples are scarce due to the difficulty of finding well preserved biological specimens. However, amber is a fossil resin with natural preserving properties for microbial cells and DNA. The visualization by transmission electron microscopy of different microorganismlike specimens found in amber nuggets from both the Miocene and the Cretaceous periods was accompanied by studies of ancient DNA obtained from the nuggets. After the design of specific primers based on the present sequences of both genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the ancestral AGP2 sequence from the Miocene, as well as the 18S rRNA from the Cretaceous, were amplified.