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Posted on Jul 28, 2005, 8 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
If wisdom comes with age, then brain cells are some of the wisest in the body: researchers have applied carbon dating to DNA to confirm that cells in the brain live longer than most others.
If wisdom comes with age, then brain cells are some of the wisest in the body: researchers have applied carbon dating to DNA to confirm that cells in the brain live longer than most others.
This is a new application for the technique, which is traditionally used in archaeology and palaeoanthropology to pinpoint the age of fossils.
Carbon dating looks at the ratio of radioactive carbon, which is naturally present at low levels in the atmosphere and food, to normal carbon within an organism. While a creature lives, eats and breathes, its ratio of radioactive to normal carbon will equal that of its environment. But when it dies, this ratio will fall, as the carbon-14 decays.
Radioactive carbon decays slowly, such that a given amount of carbon-14 halves every 6,000 years. So detecting the subtle change in the ratio of normal to naturally occurring radioactive carbon over just a few years is incredibly hard.
But Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, says it can be done if one takes advantage of the signal left by nuclear testing, which spewed high levels of carbon-14 into the air during the Cold War.
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This is a new application for the technique, which is traditionally used in archaeology and palaeoanthropology to pinpoint the age of fossils.
Carbon dating looks at the ratio of radioactive carbon, which is naturally present at low levels in the atmosphere and food, to normal carbon within an organism. While a creature lives, eats and breathes, its ratio of radioactive to normal carbon will equal that of its environment. But when it dies, this ratio will fall, as the carbon-14 decays.
Radioactive carbon decays slowly, such that a given amount of carbon-14 halves every 6,000 years. So detecting the subtle change in the ratio of normal to naturally occurring radioactive carbon over just a few years is incredibly hard.
But Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, says it can be done if one takes advantage of the signal left by nuclear testing, which spewed high levels of carbon-14 into the air during the Cold War.
Read Full Story
