Palaeontology is the study of the
history of life on the Earth by using fossils or traces of ancient organisms.
It studies all types of fossils like bones, teeth, shells of organisms,
classifies them, and studies relationships with each other, and finds out the
ancestors of currently living organisms.
Palaeontology is different from
Archaeology, it is between the biology and geology subjects that use different
science subjects like Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mathematics, and Engineering for
the study of fossils and their traces. Palaeontology is a popular science
subject that plays a very important role in Biotechnology to study the
evolutionary history of life by determining the evolutionary identity of
present living and past organisms.
In Biology, Taxonomy refers to
the classification of invertebrates and the groups are known as Taxa and
arranged in a hierarchical system in which their relationships are represented
with each other. The evolution theory of Palaeontology based on the various
disciplines of science like chemistry, biology, genetics, comparative anatomy,
embryology, and population biology.
Importance of Palaeontology in Biotechnology
Under Biotechnology,
Bioinformatics is the major subject that provides information related the
biological science. Bioinformatics mainly uses biological macromolecules
such as DNA, RNA, and proteins sequencing data for storage, retrieval,
manipulation, distribution and predicts the interpreted results by using
computer applications. It uses computer applications and algorithms because
genomic data of various organisms’ analyses are highly repetitive or
mathematically very complex.
Molecular Palaeontology is a very
important branch of Palaeontology that refers to the analysis of DNA, RNA,
proteins, carbohydrates, or lipids, etc. that are extracted from the fossils
and traces of ancient human, animal, and plant remaining parts.
In Molecular Palaeontology by
using various molecular biological analytical techniques such as DNA isolation,
amplification and sequencing scientists of DNAs found in fossils, Palaeontologists
quantify the level of relation between any two organisms by phylogenetic
analysis.
Phylogenetic is purely depends on
the study of the evolutionary history of living organisms by using tree-like
diagrams to represent their relations with each other. Palaeontology provides
essential raw data for classifying ancient organisms, Biological
classification, Phylogenetic nomenclature, and Evolutionary taxonomy.
Molecular data of DNA or protein
sequences provides evolutionary perspectives of existing organisms. With the
help of comparative analysis of the fossils on the basis of molecular analysis
and Phylogenetic tree analysis, we find the evolution of the particular
organism that are related to each other.
Genes are the main genetic
material that accumulates mutations over the time period and causes the change
in phenotypes of the organisms. These mutations can be studied from the fossils
of the different organisms easily by applying Molecular Palaeontology
techniques.
Techniques used in Molecular Palaeontology
Molecular Palaeontology is a rich field of science that interrelated to various science and provides various important information related to ecologies of the ancient time, about the evolution of life, and the evolution of humans. By using Molecular Palaeontology techniques we get more accurate data’s.
- Biomarkers
- Molecular Dating
- Palaeoecology
- Systematics
- Mitochondrial DNA Analysis
- Nuclear Genome Analysis
Fossils of ancient organisms,
like bones, shells, imprints, tracks, and biogenic macromolecules are studied
by various methods and Biotechnological techniques. Biotechnological techniques
like PCR, immunochemical reactions (ELISA or Radioimmunoassay) techniques and
other chemical or physical techniques like various types of chromatography, NMR
and IR spectroscopy is used to study fossils of organisms.
Every Biotechnology scholar
learns Molecular Phylogenetic which is a very important topic of Molecular
Biology, Bioinformatics and Genetic Engineering subjects. Molecular Phylogenetic is purely based on
Palaeontology studies. After learning Molecular Phylogenetic every
Biotechnology student can easily understand the role of Palaeontology in
Biotechnology.
