Ludovic Orlando, research director of the CNRS and specialists for paleogenetics, examines in his book “Fossil DNA, A Time Machine”, as the analysis of the old DNA enables us to reconstruct our past and at the same time ask ethical questions about the limits of this science.
Ludovic Orlando is a doctor in paleogenetics, research director at CNRS. He heads the Toulouse Anthropology and Genomic Center at Paul-Sabatier University. His book “The Fossil DNA, A Time Machine” has just been published in bags (Odile Jacob Edition). Interview.
The publication in pockets of your work is the success of the success. What does the public appeal to this discipline so much?
The fascination for the past in general, the ability to find swallowed or deleted worlds. In the west, our imagination was nourished by the film Jurassic Park and the DNA of the dinosaurs. People know that part of this story about science fiction in the sense that we will not bring dinosaurs back. On the other hand, part of this science fiction is very real because you can organize organic remains of missing species in good time.
What does it bring to study old DNA?
Three things. The first, these extinct worlds opposed the disappearance. It is always good to do memory work. To know better our past, we have a more complete story about what has led to us, we avoid that the past is forgotten. Then there is one basic aspect in all of this. Sections of our story are not known by going through support that do not necessarily write, it enables you to adhere to the most beautiful thing that happened in a certain time. We learn things that we could not learn in the same way through lack of information. After all, it has an applied virtue. In other words, our very sharp and sensitive methods used for pure knowledge can be applied to daily life as if you want to find the tiny traces of a crime at a crime scene.
What prompted you to specialize in paleogenetics?
I examined molecular biology that contained research on DNA, and at the same time I was a frustrated historian because history always passionately passionately has me passionately. On the day I understood that DNA was both biologically and historically a source of information because we see the parenting relationships between individuals, the migrations of peoples, etc., I knew that the paleogen ability enables me to support both at the same time.
Can you explain to us how the sequencing of the oldest known genome was carried out?
I have to indicate that my recording of the genome (in other words the entire DNA) was sprayed the oldest of two Danish teams. The current record is no longer my mine, which was 700,000 years and rose to 1.3 million years and 2 million years for DNA songs for the genome. In both cases, the techniques used are the same.
What are you?
New high -speed sequencers have been released since 2008, which can sequence a lot more molecules in parallel to read the genetic text. These increasingly perfected machines can read 50 billion DNA molecules every evening that are not exorbitant. The genome of people, as we can be sequenced for a sum between € 200 and € 400. All over the world, millions of people have done this to know their genetic intimacy because it could be of central importance for them.
Is that your case?
NO. As much as I have been fascinated in the past, as much as I don’t want to do for myself. If my DNA is unique, it is also half of my parents and children. Even if I do the test for myself, I make a decision for others than me, it bothers me. Everyone does not want to know whether they are wearing a mutation, a completely different family history … and then goes back in time, around 4000 years, all people who live on earth have a common ancestors. After all, I believe that my roots are as biologically as cultural as I don’t want to reduce my being to molecules. We are all richer than what our DNA can imply.
Do you think that one day the paleogenomics could allow you to “revive” missing species like the Jurassic Park?
American boxes have recently collected more than one billion dollars. These are all resources that do not go to other fights. If technology can do this as a good scientist, you have to ask yourself if you should do it. In other words, what is possible is desirable and ethical. In view of the current biodiversity crisis, one can ask whether the priority is to bring a mammoth or to preserve the types that disappear from our eyes and that we could do it. If we can read old DNA technologically, this does not mean that we can do it. Even if we say we will revive a mammoth with his DNA from the past, it is not entirely true. We’ll rather take his closest cousin, the elephant of Asia, from which we will transform certain cells. And what do we do with this isolated individual without fellow, far from its original world?
What Council would you give young researchers who would like to have themselves in the field of Paleogenomical selection?
For you like all researchers: Shake! Because there is a lot of reason not to have fun in this profession, especially political.