Figure 4.

Observed and predicted rates of DNA decay. The predicted survival of DNA in bone through time, measured as intact phosphodiester bonds in the DNA backbone (a), and survival of a 242 bp fragment (b). The depicted survival rates are based on: (i) the average mtDNA decay rate measured directly from qPCR of 158 moa bones; (ii) the rate of depurination measured from DNA in solution at pH 5 in Lindahl & Nyberg [22] but adjusted to 13.1°C to allow comparison with the moa data; (iii) the same rate adjusted further to pH 7.5, as expected inside a bone; (iv) mtDNA and nuDNA decay rates calculated based on Illumina HiSeq data from two moa samples (HiSeq 1 from sample S40114, HiSeq 2 from sample S39946-3). The estimated decay rate (k, per site per year) is listed for each of the seven datasets.