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Vaniver comments on An alarming fact about the anti-aging community - Less Wrong
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Do you have to do anything fancy for tooth storage? As I recall, the dentist managed to extract my wisdom teeth intact and so I think they're sitting in a box somewhere (but have been for ~five years). Given that people get useful DNA out of prehistoric specimens, that makes me not immediately dismiss the possibility (but I expect that freezing them or something similar is better).
You can get DNA from that easily but it's by no means living. You can't make a living cell from such DNA, you can just dissolve the tissue and get sequence data by running the resultant treated slurry into a sequencer. Hence the people who have been trying to clone mammoths for a decade failing - they can't find a single still-living culturable cell in any of those permafrost mammoth carcasses, despite trying and trying and trying, and thus can't do somatic cell nuclear transfer into an egg, even though they can get a complete set of mammoth sequence data.
They want them frozen immediately, shipped in an insulated box with an ice pack, and then they extract cells and store the cells cryogenically. So that's probably not sufficient.
Why did the dentist save them?
When I've had surgeries, and tried to get tissue samples, the hospitals have said they're not allowed to let human tissue leave the hospital unless it's treated in ways that destroy the DNA (eg formaldehyde). Even when I have a valid immediate clinical need for DNA testing of the sample backed up by a note from a doctor, and the extraction requires serious, damaging surgery.
I'm not sure, and they may very well have been treated to destroy the DNA.
Interesting. I got my wisdom teeth given to me in an envelope with tiny pieces of soft ligament (that rapidly dried out) still attached to the roots within 15 minutes of waking up. Still have them in my bedroom desk drawer.
Course it wasn't a hospital. It was more like an outpatient clinic that only did dental work, where the most intense stuff they did was putting people like me unconscious with barbituates for ~25 minutes.