Scientists Rebuild Ancient Proteins To Reveal Primordial Earth’s Temperature
Using the genetic equivalent of an ancient thermometer, a team of scientists has determined that the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago. Reporting Feb. 7 in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Florida, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and the biotechnology company DNA2.0 describe how they reconstructed proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth’s temperature over the ages.
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Filed under: Biology on February 7th, 2008