Improved recovery of ancient DNA from subfossil wood – application to the world's oldest Late Glacial pine forest

Summary Ancient DNA from historical and subfossil wood has a great potential to provide new insights into the history of tree populations. However, its extraction and analysis have not become routine, mainly because contamination of the wood with modern plant material can complicate the verification of genetic information. Here, we used sapwood tissue from 22 subfossil pines that were growing c . 13 000 yr bp in Zurich, Switzerland. We developed...