The most ancient DNA recovered from an amber-preserved specimen may not be as ancient as it seems

Light curing may not be as simple as it seems – again!

Ancient DNA from Human and Animal

Research on ancient DNA (aDNA) has the potential to enable molecular biologists and archeologists to decipher certain aspects of history by direct looking into the past. However, several major problems in this field limit the applicability of aDNA studies, most importantly contamination with modern DNA and postmortem DNA degradation. In this study we extracted and analyzed aDNA obtained from ~3...

Pharmacological PKA inhibition: all may not be what it seems.

Signaling through the cyclic adenosine monophosphate-dependent protein kinase [protein kinase A (PKA)] is an important and widely studied area of signal transduction research. This signaling pathway is commonly investigated through the use of the pharmacological PKA inhibitors H89 and KT 5720. Both of these compounds are thought to block PKA actions through competitive inhibition of the adenosi...

Pharmacological PKA Inhibition : All May Not Be What It Seems

Page 1 Overview of cAMP Signaling The transduction of extracellular signals to intracellular responses is one of the most important and complicated aspects of cellular life. The cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling pathway is involved in numerous processes and is widely regarded as the “classical” second messenger signaling pathway. cAMP is synthesized from adenosine triphosphate (AT...

Problems of reproducibility--does geologically ancient DNA survive in amber-preserved insects?

Apparently ancient DNA has been reported from amber-preserved insects many millions of years old. Rigorous attempts to reproduce these DNA sequences from amber- and copal-preserved bees and flies have failed to detect any authentic ancient insect DNA. Lack of reproducibility suggests that DNA does not survive over millions of years even in amber, the most promising of fossil environments.