Dr. Nolan emailed the producers and offered to look for DNA in the mummy. Once Dr. Nolan and his colleagues received the samples, they were able to retrieve fragments of DNA from bone marrow cells without much struggle. Ata’s DNA fragments are still large, another clue that she’s less than 500 years old. Sanchita Bhattacharya, a researcher in Dr. Butte’s lab, searched for mutations in Ata’s DNA and identified 2.7 million variants throughout the genome. But some of Ata’s mutations are new to science.

Source: New York Times March 22, 2018 16:52 UTC