[erik-g]

How would you know where to align the sequences? I am not an evolutionary biologist so maybe one of those people have a "yes, actually!", but consider modern descendants of dinosaurs have 1 billion base pairs and 20,000-23,000 genes[1], and the fact that we have many many living versions of those fowl to experiment with. Trying to realign chopped up bits of dna with who know how much completely missing, and minimal opportunities to experiment or direct information as to how any particular sequence functions, I can't see any way to extract useful data from highly degraded dna.

More information of degraded dna handling techniques, albeit in the forensics field and aimed toward people, but interesting to me nonetheless [2]

[1] - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7018/full/nature0...

[2] - http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

[viraptor]

That's exactly how the DNA sequencing works for fresh samples. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_assembly We don't have the technology to do more than a few thousand bases in one go at the moment, so all modern sequencing means chopping up the sample, analysis, and then statistics based reassembly.

I don't know how it relates to million years old samples though. Maybe someone else knows why that's not easily applicable. I'd guess degradation being pretty random leaves chunks which are too small for analysis. (pure speculation, please educate me)

[devoply]

Hello? Frog DNA. Duh! :)

[yellowapple]

Just keep a tight grip on lysine and everything will work out :)