Forum:DNA decay

A Fossil Forum critic responded to my argument about the DNA half-life in Antarctic ice with this:

"As for your 1.1 million year DNA half-life, you've taken that completely out of context. Those researchers were extracting DNA from bacteria preserved in ice, not eukaryotic organisms! Bacteria store their DNA in a large circular chromosome and in smaller circular DNA molecules called plasmids. Because of these differences in storage, not to mention vastly different cellular environments, bacterial DNA is often more stable than nuclear eukaryotic DNA. You cannot project findings from one onto the other."

I knew that Bidle studied bacterial DNA, but I didn't know that bacteria DNA was more stable than eukaryotic DNA. I'd hate to point fingers at you Bastion, but did you mislead me into thinking that the half-life of bacterial DNA would apply to dinosaur DNA? Jurassic Park Treasury (talk) 09:01, September 13, 2013 (UTC)