Extracting dna from ancient bone

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I don't know if this is a long shot, but does anyone have experience in this?

Cant help you there.

But, may I ask why you are looking for DNA testing of bone on the cheap?

What kind of amateur sleuthing are you involved in?

I'm far from an expert in this, but I did take a course that covered it briefly in college. Basically what my professor said, is that it is highly unlikely that you would be able to extract useful DNA from an "ancient" bone due to its natural degradation over time, and therefore the further back you go the more unlikely a scenario it would be. He crushed my Jurrasic Park dreams!

unless you can find any of the marrow that once was you will have one heck of a hard time finding any real usable genetic samples. this is assuming the DNA has not decayed to the point where you would need a ( incredibly)well stoked lab to try and piece it back together(or it could have decayed into oblivion as the case may be)... even that does not guarantee a healthy DNA strand.... You would be better off finding out what that bone went to, analyzing that data, then look for either evolutionary descendants or 'cousins' of what it once was.Once that is done you might consider either taking the fragments( again assuming these fragments are the important and unique parts to the original sequence and not some mundane bit) and combine them with DNA from the similar creature and run more scans and computer simulations. you WILL need access to a heck of a lot of gene databases and this too will be a thorn. this will not be easy...Assuming you eventually have a strand of usable DNA cobbled together then you have the rather thorny issue of how to go about using it. a common issue overlooked in Cloning for example is that they are using DNA from a adult specimen. This DNA has already had some damage to it just from living that long and being copied so many times.all that aside what you plan on doing with the assembled DNA now runs into several issues....I could write pages on this matter but unless you are determined heart and soul to such a project it is almost impossible.

Redacted

even with the above( and miraculous) find we still have to deal with not only the weak hydrogen bond between the halves but a plethora of other issues..granted my forte is far more into Organic chemistry than genetics as of late I can still safely say that if the bacteria,carnivores/whatever that was alive at it's time of death did not damage the DNA samples the millions of years, heat and other environmental factors have certainly decimated what was once there.. Again you would have a better chance reverse engineering a DNA strand to that of your Dino of choice than to search for 60+ million year old DNA fragments..

Thanks for the replies!

Yeah... so ancient is a no go anyway.
But I imagine bones that are just 1 or 2 centuries old will be significantly less problematic to work with, yes? And I will be working with human bone - probably a femur, maybe a tibia, and it should have some marrow leftover inside. Also, I hope to have access to basic lab stuff like PCR materials, electrophoresis stuff, other chemicals, etc.

I'm actually hoping to simulate aging/degradation by the environment by storing fragments of the bone in different extreme conditions (vary mineral content of water, try wet soil, dry sand, maybe some different pHs) and I'm hoping to figure out someway to see how those conditions effects the condition of the dna I can extract from it. Not too sure about what kind of tests I could do to objectively observe dna quality, but I'm planning to talk with one of my professors soon about this and other stuff.

DNA contamination is also a concern, esp. for the ones that might be stored in bacterially hospitable conditions (like wet soil) so I think purification of whatever dna I do obtain will also be a concern.

From the more recent, the Japanese have been claiming for years they were going to restart a frozen Mammoth. Good supply out of Siberia, flash frozen. The same could produce a denisovan or nenderthal.

A Stem Cell line from 25,000 years ago would be useful.

Your best bet is to contact any local university and ask them what specialists you can contact.

Also note that if you're thinking of working with human remains that is highly illegal. If its a 2 century old dog bone.. no problem.