RE: What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?
May 29, 2023 at 11:10 pm
(This post was last modified: May 29, 2023 at 11:14 pm by Rev. Rye.)
Jurassic Park, fortunately or not, would be functionally impossible IRL. It turns out that the half-life of DNA is only 521 years. So, after a minimum of 65 million years, there wouldn’t be anything usable left.
To check and see how long it could potentially last, I found out that the Australian lungfish has 43 billion base pairs in its genome (the largest one known). Log2(43 billion)=35.324 half-lives * 521 years per half-life=18,403.804 years.
So, yes, even if a mosquito somehow managed to suck that lungfish’s blood and then got preserved in amber, that DNA would only have lasted 18,403 years. And that’s not even “with holes in the genome that can be filled with frog DNA”, that’s ANY DNA.
To check and see how long it could potentially last, I found out that the Australian lungfish has 43 billion base pairs in its genome (the largest one known). Log2(43 billion)=35.324 half-lives * 521 years per half-life=18,403.804 years.
So, yes, even if a mosquito somehow managed to suck that lungfish’s blood and then got preserved in amber, that DNA would only have lasted 18,403 years. And that’s not even “with holes in the genome that can be filled with frog DNA”, that’s ANY DNA.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
