You cannot reliably 'date' DNA by degradation, at least not without knowing what amount of DNA was present in the beginning and what conditions it was subjected to. The main killer of ancient DNA is a warm, moist acidic environment which leads to depurination. On a surface you are also dealing with a horde of microorganisms secreting nucleases which shred DNA.
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The conditions the VM has encountered in the past 600 years are unknown (temperature, humidity, exposure to sunlight) and may even vary between different bifolios. Local chemistry (mainly pH) of the vellum likely also plays an important role in binding/preserving DNA from spot to spot. This needs to be tested out, no idea what's the state of science here and if human DNA can be successfully sequenced from vellum of that age at all. That's a completely different beast than bones from a cave or saliva protected under a less than 100 year old stamp.
Also merely extracting DNA from the vellum surface will yield myriads of tiny fragments of a multitude of people that have handled the VM, most of them likely fairly recently. It is a tremendous to impossible task to sort and reconstruct larger DNA sequences from this mess and the dangers of creating an artificial chimera are high. While it is possible to exclude DNA sequences generated from large intact fragments and thus likely of modern origin, degradation does not necessarily correlate with age but rather with amount of DNA and local conditions. Even DNA contamination during sampling may produce some small fragments indistinguishable from ancient DNA. This has happened before in anthropology and led to great embarrassment.
As I already said, if we have single author who spent his life on the VM there would likely be a lot of DNA from that person. By sheer amount the chance of getting something readable increases. At least a little bit.
By the way, did scribes touch the parchment with their palm during writing or was this avoided? This would leave a lot more DNA that the average reader. I'd stay away from corners for this very reason if you are interested in the author(s). The ideal sampling spot on a bifolio would be where the scribe touches the surface for a prolonged time while a reader is unlikely to do so.
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The conditions the VM has encountered in the past 600 years are unknown (temperature, humidity, exposure to sunlight) and may even vary between different bifolios. Local chemistry (mainly pH) of the vellum likely also plays an important role in binding/preserving DNA from spot to spot. This needs to be tested out, no idea what's the state of science here and if human DNA can be successfully sequenced from vellum of that age at all. That's a completely different beast than bones from a cave or saliva protected under a less than 100 year old stamp.
Also merely extracting DNA from the vellum surface will yield myriads of tiny fragments of a multitude of people that have handled the VM, most of them likely fairly recently. It is a tremendous to impossible task to sort and reconstruct larger DNA sequences from this mess and the dangers of creating an artificial chimera are high. While it is possible to exclude DNA sequences generated from large intact fragments and thus likely of modern origin, degradation does not necessarily correlate with age but rather with amount of DNA and local conditions. Even DNA contamination during sampling may produce some small fragments indistinguishable from ancient DNA. This has happened before in anthropology and led to great embarrassment.
As I already said, if we have single author who spent his life on the VM there would likely be a lot of DNA from that person. By sheer amount the chance of getting something readable increases. At least a little bit.
By the way, did scribes touch the parchment with their palm during writing or was this avoided? This would leave a lot more DNA that the average reader. I'd stay away from corners for this very reason if you are interested in the author(s). The ideal sampling spot on a bifolio would be where the scribe touches the surface for a prolonged time while a reader is unlikely to do so.
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