Profs & Pints Nashville: Ancient DNA and De-Extinction

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Ancient DNA and De-Extinction,” on the quest to bring back dire wolves and other long-lost species, with Katie McCormack, instructor in biological and ancient DNA research at Vanderbilt University.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7.]

Is it true, per recent headlines, that we’ve actually revived the extinct dire wolf using ancient DNA? What does it mean if we did?

Come to Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom to hear such questions tackled by Vanderbilt University’s Katie McCormack, who writes about genetic ethics and the impact of genetic technology and whose own research combines genetics and archaeology to study our prehistoric ancestors based on their microbial DNA.

She’ll introduce you to the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) research and bring you up to speed on efforts to reconstruct ancient genomes, the combinations of genetic information that helped make our hominid ancestors and other species what they were. She’ll give you an overview of the science that makes studying and using samples of ancient DNA possible and walk you through the history of efforts to find meaning in small fragments of DNA that survive in the archaeological record.

She’ll explore some of the major discoveries such technology makes possible and discuss efforts to bring back the dire wolf, the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and even Tyrannosaurus Rex.

You’ll learn about the Neanderthal-Human babies in your family tree, about research suggesting that seals brought Tuberculosis to the Americas, and why we almost certainly won’t be bringing T-Rex back any time soon. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Skeletal remains of an extinct dire wolf on display at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas. Photo by James St. John / Creative Commons.