Scientists are working to bring back a woolly mammoth-like species to roam the Earth’s tundra. A study published last year, however, complicates these efforts. Researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm found that woolly mammoths lost nearly 100 genes as they evolved.
Love Dalén, professor in evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University, explained that such alterations to genes can change pathways, which affect key traits.
“From an evolutionary perspective, what this means is that since these deletions have become fixed in the wooly mammoth, that means that they are somehow adaptive,” says Dalén.
But this is still a hypothesis, and the findings raise further questions. “We don’t know when these deletions evolved,” Dalén says. “It could have been any time since woolly mammoths diverged from the elephant, about five million years ago.”
In total, 84 genes were deleted and three were short insertions, altering the genome structure. Researchers suggest it’s ...
