Forum:DNA in bones

A critic on the Fossil Forum told me this about Schweitzer's DNA discovery:

"The reason Schweitzer argues the DNA she found isn't bacterial has nothing to do with cell membranes (which bacteria have by the way), instead it has to do with a completely different test she ran where she used an antibody specific to histones to stain her samples. Histones are used by eukaryotic cells to package DNA tightly into a chromosome. Bacteria do not use histones to package DNA. Schweitzer found that her samples all tested positive for histones, which looks pretty good ... except.

It's true that bacteria do not use histones, but archaea do :). Archaea utilize histones very similarly to the way we do, to help package DNA. Archaea were once thought of strictly as extremophiles, but this has since been disproved. Archaea are found pretty much everywhere, in the soil, in the middle of rocks, in the ocean, in our gut biota, even in the air we breath. Of particular note are the methanogenic archaea which are intimately associated with decay ... you know, like a dead dinosaur." Jurassic Park Treasury (talk) 05:40, September 13, 2013 (UTC)